THE drops were falling fast by the time they reached the building. They
hastily dismounted and pushed forward to the wide stone archway which
served as entrance. A door of rudely joined boards swung across the
opening, but it was ajar and banging in the wind. Sybert threw it open
and led the horses into the gloomy interior. It proved to be a
wine-cellar, probably belonging to the monastery. The room was low but
deep, with a dirt floor and rough masonry walls; in the rear two huge
vats rose dimly to the roof, and the floor was scattered with
farming-implements. The air was damp and musty and pungent with the
smell of fermenting grape-juice.
Sybert fastened the horses to a low beam by means of their bridles,
while Marcia sat down upon a plough and pensively regarded the
landscape. He presently joined her.
‘This is not a very cheerful refuge,’ he remarked; ‘but at least it is
drier than the open road.’
She moved along and offered him part of her seat.
‘I think I can improve on that,’ he said, as he rummaged out a board
from a pile of lumber and fitted it at a somewhat precarious slope
across the plough. They gingerly sat down upon it and Marcia observed—
‘I suppose if you had your way, Mr. Sybert, we should be sitting on a
McCormick reaper.’
‘It would at least be more comfortable,’ he returned.
The rain was beating fiercely by this time, and the lightning flashes
were following each other in quick succession. Black clouds were
rolling inland from across the Volscian mountains and piling layer upon
layer above their heads. Marcia sat watching the gathering storm, and
presently she exclaimed:
‘This might be a situation out of a book! To be overtaken by a
thunderstorm in the Sabine mountains and seek shelter in a deserted
wine-cellar—it sounds like one of the “Duchess’s” novels.’
‘It does have a familiar ring,’ he agreed. ‘It only remains for you to
sprain your ankle.’
She laughed softly, with an undertone of excitement in her voice.
‘I’ve never had so many adventures in my life as since we came out to
Villa Vivalanti—Marcellus, and Gervasio, and Gervasio’s stepfather,
and now a cloud-burst in the mountains! If they’re going to rise to a
climax, I can’t imagine what our stay will end with.’
‘Henry James, you know, says that the only adventures worth having are
intellectual adventures.’
Marcia considered this proposition doubtfully.
‘In an intellectual adventure,’ she objected, ‘you could never be quite
sure that it really _was_ an adventure; you’d always be afraid you’d
imagined half of it. I think I prefer mine more visibly exciting.
There’s something picturesque in a certain amount of real bloodshed.’
Sybert turned his eyes away from her with a gesture of indifference.
‘Oh, if it’s merely bloodshed you’re after,’ he said dryly, ‘you’ll
find as much as you like in any butcher’s shop.’
She watched him for a moment and then she observed, ‘I suppose you are
disagreeable on purpose, Mr. Sybert. You have a—’ she hesitated for a
word, and as none presented itself, substituted a generic
term—‘_horrid_ way of answering a person.’
He turned back toward her with a laugh. ‘If I really thought you meant
it, I should have a still “horrider” way.’
‘Certainly I mean it,’ she declared. ‘I’ve always liked to read about
fights and plots and murders in books. I think it’s nice to have a
little blood spattered about. It’s a sort of concrete symbol of
courage.’
‘Ah—I saw a concrete symbol of courage the other day, but I can’t say
that it struck me as attractive.’
‘What was it?’
‘A fellow lying by the roadside, in a pool of dirty water and blood,
with his mouth wide open, a couple of stiletto wounds in his neck, and
his brains spattered over his face—brains may be useful, but they’re
not pretty.’
She looked at him gravely, with a slow expression of disgust.
‘I suppose you think I’m horrider than ever now?’
‘Yes, said Marcia; ‘I do.’
‘Then don’t make any such absurd statement as that you think bloodshed
picturesque. The world’s got beyond that. Do you object if I smoke? I
don’t think it would hurt this place to have a bit of fumigating.’
She nodded permission, and watched him silently as he rolled a
cigarette and hunted through his pockets for a match. The coat did not
reward his search, and he commenced on the waistcoat. Suddenly she
broke out with—
‘What’s that in your pocket, Mr. Sybert?’
A momentary shade of annoyance flashed over his face.
‘It’s a dynamite bomb.’
‘It’s a revolver! What are you carrying that for? It’s against the law.’
‘Don’t tell the police’ he pleaded. ‘I’ve always liked to play with
fire-arms; it’s a habit I’ve never outgrown.’
‘Why are you carrying it?’ she repeated.
Sybert found his match and lighted his cigarette with slow
deliberation. Then he rose to his feet and looked down at her. ‘You ask
too many questions, Miss Marcia,’ he said, and he commenced pacing back
and forth the length of the dirt floor.
She remained with her elbow resting on her knee and her chin in her
hand, looking out at the storm. Presently he came back and sat down
again.
‘Is our amnesty off?’ he asked.
Before she could open her mouth to respond a fierce white flash of
lightning came, followed instantly by a deafening crash of thunder. A
torrent of water came pouring down on the loose tiles with a roar that
sounded like a cannonading. The air seemed quivering with electricity.
The horses plunged and snorted in terror, and Sybert sprang to his feet
to quiet them.
‘Jove! It _is_ a cloudburst,’ he cried.
Marcia ran to the open doorway and stood looking out across the
storm-swept valley. The water was coming down in an almost solid sheet;
the clouds hung low and black and impenetrable except when a jagged
line of lightning cut them in two. From the height across the valley
the tall square monastery tower rose defiantly into the very midst of
the storm, while the cypress trees at its base swayed and writhed and
wrung their hands in agony. Sybert came and stood beside her, and the
two watched the storm in silence.
‘There,’ he suddenly flashed out, with a little undertone of triumph in
his voice—‘there is Italy!’ He nodded toward the old walls rising so
stanchly from the storm. ‘That’s the way the Italians have weathered
tyranny and revolution and oppression for centuries, and that’s the way
they will keep on doing.’
She looked up at him quickly, and caught a gleam of something she had
never seen before in his face. It was as if an internal fire were
blazing through. For an imperceptible second he held her look, then his
eyelids drooped again and his usual expression of reserve came back.
‘Come and sit down,’ he said; ‘you’re getting wet.’
They turned back to the plough again and sat side by side, looking out
at the storm. The beating of the rain on the tiles above their heads
made a difficult accompaniment for conversation, and they did not try
to talk. But they were electrically aware of each other’s presence; the
wild excitement of the storm had taken hold of both of them. Marcia’s
breath came fast through slightly parted lips, her cheeks were flushed,
her hair was tumbled, and there was a yellow glow in her deep grey
eyes. Her face seemed to vivify the gloomy interior. Sybert glanced at
her sidewise once or twice in half surprise; she did not seem exactly
the person he had thought he knew. Her hand lay in her lap, idly
clasping her gloves and whip. It looked white and soft against her
black habit.
Suddenly Marcia asked a question.
‘Will you tell me something, Mr. Sybert?’
‘I am at your service,’ he bowed.
‘And the truth?’
‘Oh, certainly, the truth.’
She glanced down in her lap a moment and smoothed the fingers of her
gloves in a thoughtful silence. ‘Well,’ she said finally, ‘I don’t
know, after all, what I want to ask you; but there is something in the
air that I don’t understand. Tell me the truth about Italy.’
‘The truth about Italy?’ He repeated the words with a slight accent of
surprise.
‘Last week in Rome, at the Roystons’ hotel, everybody was talking about
the wheat famine and the bread riots, and they all stopped suddenly
when I asked any questions. Uncle Howard will never tell me a thing; he
just jokes about it when I ask him.’
‘He’s afraid,’ said Sybert. ‘No one dares to tell the truth in Italy;
it’s lèse majesté.’
She glanced up at him quickly to see what he meant. His face was quite
grave, but there was a disagreeable suggestion of a smile about his
lips. She looked out of doors again with an angry light in her eyes.
‘Oh, I think you are beastly!’ she cried. ‘You and Uncle Howard both
act as if I were ten years old. I don’t think that a wheat famine is
any subject to joke about.’
‘Miss Marcia,’ he said quietly, ‘when things get to a certain point, if
you wish to keep your senses you can’t do anything but joke about them.’
‘Tell me,’ she said.
There was a look of troubled expectancy in her face. Sybert half closed
his eyes and studied the ground without speaking. Not very many days
before he had felt a fierce desire to hurl the story at her, to
confront her with a picture of the suffering that her father had
caused; now he felt as strongly as her uncle that she must not know.
‘Since you cannot do anything to help, why should you wish to
understand? There are so many unpleasant things in the world, and so
many of us already who know about them. It’s—’ he turned toward her
with a little smile, but one which she did not resent—‘well, it’s a
relief, you know, to see a few people who accept their happiness as a
free gift from heaven and ask no questions.’
‘I am not a baby. I should not care to accept happiness on any such
terms.’
‘And you want to know about Italy? Very well,’ he said grimly; ‘I can
give you plenty of statistics.’ He leaned forward with his elbows on
his knees and traced lines in the dirt floor with his whip, speaking in
the emotionless tone of one who is quoting a list from a catalogue.
‘The poor people bear three-fourths of the taxes. Every necessity of
life is taxed—bread and salt and meat and utensils—but such things as
carriages and servants and jewels go comparatively free. When the
government has squeezed all it can from the people, the church takes
its share, and then the government comes in again with the state
lotteries. The Latin races are already sufficiently addicted to
gambling without needing any extra encouragement from the state. Part
of the revenue thus collected is spent in keeping up the army—in
training the young men of the country in idleness and in a great many
things they would do better without. Part of it goes to build arcades
and fountains and statues of Victor Emmanuel. The most of it stops in
official pockets. You may think that politics are as corrupt as they
can be in America, but I assure you it is not the case. In Italy the
priests won’t let the people vote, and the parliament is run in the
interests of a few. The people are ignorant and superstitious; more
than half of them can neither read nor write, and the government
exploits them as it pleases. The farm labourer earns only from
twenty-five to thirty cents a day to support himself and his family.
Fortunately, living is cheap or there would soon not be any farm
labourers alive.
‘Last year—’ he paused and an angry flush crept under his dark
skin—‘last year in Lombardy, Venetia, and the Marches—three of the
most fertile provinces in Italy—fifteen thousand people went mad from
hunger. The children of these _pellagrosi_ will be idiots and cripples,
and ten years from now you will find them on the steps of churches,
holding out maimed hands for coppers. At this present moment there are
ten thousand people in Naples crowded into damp caves and
cellars—practically all of them stricken with consumption and
scrofula, and sick with hunger.’
He leaned forward and looked into her face with blazing eyes.
‘Marcia, in this last week I’ve seen—God!’ he burst out, ‘_what_
things I’ve seen!’
He got up and strode to the door, and Marcia sat looking after him with
frightened eyes. The air seemed charged with his words. She felt
herself trembling, and she caught her breath quickly with a half-gasp.
She closed her eyes and pictures rose up before her—pictures she did
not wish to see. She thought of the hordes of poor people in Castel
Vivalanti, of the bony, wrinkled hands that were stretched out for
coppers at every turn, of the crowds of children with hungry faces. She
thought of the houses that they lived in—wretched little dens, dark
and filthy and damp. And it wasn’t their fault, she repeated to
herself; it wasn’t their fault. They were honest and frugal, they
wanted work; but there was not enough to go around.
She sat quite still for several moments, feeling acutely a great many
things she had scarcely divined before. Then presently she glanced over
her shoulder at the great vats towering out of the darkness behind her.
They suddenly presented themselves to her imagination as a symbol, a
visible sign of the weight of society bearing down upon the poor,
crushing out goodness and happiness and hope. As she watched them with
half-fascinated eyes, they seemed to swell and grow until they
dominated the whole room with the sense of their oppressiveness. She
rose with a little shiver and almost ran to the door.
‘Let’s go!’ she cried.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, looking at her face.
‘Nothing. I want to go. It’s stopped raining.’
He led out the horses and helped her to mount.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked again, ‘Your hand is trembling. Did I say
anything to frighten you?’
She shook her head without answering, and when they reached the road
she drew a long breath of fresh air and glanced back with a nervous
laugh.
‘I had the most horrible feeling in there! I felt as if something were
going to reach out from those vats and grab me from behind.’
‘I think,’ he suggested, ‘that you’d better take some of your aunt’s
quinine when you get home.’
‘Mr. Sybert,’ she said presently, ‘I told you one day that I thought
poor people were picturesque, I don’t think so any more.’
‘I didn’t suppose that you meant it.’
‘But I did!’ said Marcia. ‘I’ve merely changed my mind.’ She touched
Kentucky Lil with her whip and splashed on ahead down the road that led
toward the monastery, while Sybert followed with a slightly perplexed
frown.
The storm had passed as quickly as it had come. Loose, flying clouds
still darkened the sky, but the heavy black thunder-clouds were already
far to the eastward over the Apennines. In its brief passage, however,
the storm had left havoc behind it. The vines in the wayside vineyards
were stripped of their leaves, and the bamboo poles they were trained
upon broken and bent. Branches torn from the olive trees were strewn
over the grass, and in the wheat fields the young grain was bowed
almost to the ground. A fierce mountain torrent poured down the side of
the road through a gully that an hour before had been dry.
The mountain air was fresh and keen, and the horses, excited by the
storm, plunged on, recklessly irrespective of mud and water. They
crossed the little valley that lay between the hill of the wine-cellar
and the higher hill of the monastery, clattered through the single
street of the tiny hamlet which huddled itself at the base of the hill,
and wound on upward along the narrow walled roadway that turned and
unturned upon itself like the coils of a serpent. They passed through
the dark grove of cypresses that skirted the outer walls, and emerged
for a moment on a small plateau which gave a wide view of receding
hills and valleys and hills again. Below them, at a precipitous angle,
lay the valley they had just come through and the clustering
brown-tiled roofs of the little Noah’s Ark village.
As they rode out from the shadow of the trees, by a common impulse they
both drew rein and brought their horses to a standstill at the edge of
the grove. Away to the eastward the sky was black, but the western sky
was a blaze of orange light, and the sun, an orange ball, was dropping
into the purple Campagna as into a sea. The shadows were settling in
the valley beneath them, but the hills were tinged with a shimmering
light, and the tower above their heads was glowing in a sombre,
softened beauty.
They had scarcely had time, however, to more than glance at the
wide-spread picture before them when they became aware of a little
human drama that was being enacted under their eyes.
A young monk in the brown cassock of the Franciscans, probably a lay
brother in the monastery, was standing in the vineyard by the roadside,
resting for a moment from his task of tying up the vines that had been
beaten down by the storm. He had not seen the riders—his back was
turned toward them, and his gaze was resting on the field across the
way, where scarlet poppies were growing among the wheat. But his eyes
were not for the flowers, nor yet for the light on the hills
beyond—these he had seen before and understood. He was watching a
dark-haired peasant girl and a man dressed in shepherd’s clothes, who
were strolling side by side along the narrow pathway that led
diagonally through the wheat. The man, strong-limbed and brown and
muscular, in sheepskin trousers and pointed hat, was bending toward
her, talking insistently with vehement Italian gestures. She appeared
to listen, and then she shrugged her shoulders and half drew back,
while her mocking laugh rang out clearly on the still evening air. For
a moment he hesitated, then he boldly put his arm around her, and the
two passed down the hill and out of sight in the direction of the
hamlet. The poor young frate, his work forgotten, with hands idly
hanging at his sides, stared at the spot where they had disappeared.
And as he looked, the monastery bells in the campanile above him slowly
rang out the ‘Ave Maria.’ He started guiltily, and with a hasty sign of
the cross caught up his rosary and bowed his head in prayer.
At the unexpected sound of the bells the horses broke into a quick
trot. The monk, startled at the clatter of hoofs so near, turned
suddenly and looked in their direction. As he caught sight of Marcia’s
and Sybert’s eyes upon him, and knew that they had seen, a quick flush
spread over his thin dark face, and turning away he bowed his head
again.
Marcia broke the silence with a low laugh as they rode on into the
shade of the cypresses.
‘He thought we were——’ and then she stopped.
‘Lovers too,’ said Sybert. ‘Poor devil! I suppose he thinks the world
is full of lovers outside his monastery walls. There,’ he added, ‘is a
man who is living for an idea.’
‘And is beginning to suspect that it is the wrong one.’
He shot her a quick glance of comprehension. ‘Ah, there’s the rub,’ he
returned, a trifle soberly—‘when you begin to suspect your idea’s the
wrong one.’
They rode on down the hill into the darkening valley. They were going
the straight way home now, and the horses knew it. They were still in
the hills when the twilight faded, and a young moon, just beyond the
crescent, took its place, riding high in a sky scattered thick with
flying clouds. It was a wild, wet, windy night, though on the lower
levels the roads were fairly dry: the storm had evidently wasted its
fury on the heights.
It was too fast a pace to admit much talking, and they both contented
themselves with their thoughts. Only once did Marcia break the silence.
‘I feel as if we were carrying the good news from Ghent to Aix!’
Sybert laughed and quoted softly:—
‘Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace—
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place——
Kentucky Lil would make quite a Roland,’ he broke off.
‘She’s the nicest horse I ever rode,’ said Marcia.
As they turned in at the villa gates she said contritely, ‘I didn’t
know it would take so long; I’m afraid, Mr. Sybert, that I’ve made you
very late!’
‘Perhaps I like adventures too,’ he smiled; ‘and you and I, Miss
Marcia, have travelled far to-day.’