VILLA VIVALANTI was astir early in the morning—early, that is, for the
villa. Castel Vivalanti had been at work two hours and more when Pietro
went the rounds of the bedroom doors with his very obsequious, ‘_Buon
giorno_, Excellency; if it suits your convenience, coffee will be
served in the ilex grove in half an hour.’ Coffee in the ilex grove was
a new departure in accordance with Marcia’s inspiration of the night
before. And the ilex grove to-day, as Bianca exclaimed with clasped
hands, reminded one of paradise. The week of rain had left it a study
in green; the deep, rich tone of ilex leaves arching overhead, the blue
green moss on dark tree trunks, the tender tint of young grass
sprouting in the paths, and the yellow flickering sunlight glancing
everywhere. Out on the terrace the peacock was trailing his feathers
over the marble pavement with a conscious air of being in tune with the
day.
Marcia was first to appear. She stepped on to the loggia with a little
exclamation of delight at the beauty of the morning. In a pale summer
gown, her hair burnished by the sun, she herself was not out of touch
with the scene. She crossed the terrace and stood by the balustrade,
looking off through a golden and purple haze to the speck on the
horizon of Rome and St. Peter’s. The peacock called her back, strutting
insistently with wide-spread tail.
‘You ridiculous bird!’ she laughed. ‘I suppose you have been posing
here for two hours, waiting for some one to come and admire,’ and she
hurried off to the grove to make sure that Pietro had carried out her
orders.
The table was spread by the fountain, where the green arched paths
converged and the ilexes grew in an open circle. The sunlight
flickering through on dainty linen and silver and glass and on little
cakes of golden honey—fresh from a farm in the Alban hills—made a
feast which would not have been out of place in a Watteau painting.
Marcia echoed Bianca’s enthusiasm as her eyes fell upon the scene, and
Pietro flew about with an unprecedented ardour, placing rugs and
cushions and wicker chairs.
‘It is perfect,’ she cried, as she retreated down one of the paths to
get a perspective. ‘But there are no flowers,’ she added. ‘That will
never do; we must have some lilies-of-the-valley, Pietro. You fix a
bowl in the centre, while I run and pick them,’ and she started off
toward the garden borders.
Here Paul Dessart found her five minutes later. He greeted her with a
friendly, ‘_Felicissimo giorno_, signorina!’ The transient clouds of
yesterday had disappeared from his brow as well as from the sky, and he
joined gaily in her task.
‘There!’ said Marcia as she rose to her feet and shook back the stray
hair from her eyes. ‘Could anything be more in keeping with a sylvan
breakfast than these?’ She held at arm’s length for him to admire a
great bunch of delicate transparent bells sheathed in glistening green.
‘Come,’ she cried; ‘the artist must arrange them’; and together they
turned toward the fountain.
A spray of bluest forget-me-nots hung over one of the garden borders.
The young man stooped and, breaking it, presented it with his hand on
his heart.
‘Signorina,’ he begged in a tone of mock-Italian sentiment—‘dearest
signorina, I am going where duty calls—far, far away to Perugia.
_Non-te-scordar-di-me!_’
She laughed as she put the flowers in her belt, but with a slightly
deeper tinge on her cheek. Paul, in a mood like this, was very
attractive.
As they entered the grove they heard the prattle of childish voices,
and presently Gerald and Gervasio appeared down the walk, carrying each
a saucer of crumbs for their scaly friends of the fountain. They
stopped with big eyes at the sight of the table spread for breakfast.
‘Oh, Cousin Marcia!’ Gerald squealed delightedly, ‘are we doin’ to eat
out uv doors? May Gervas’ an’ me eat wif you? Please! Please!’
Marcia feigned to consider.
‘Yes,’ said she finally, ‘this is my party, and if you’ll be good boys
and not talk, I’ll invite you. And when you’ve finished your bread and
milk, if you’ve been _very_ good, you may have some—’ she paused and
lowered her voice dramatically while the two hung upon her
words—‘honey!’
Paul Dessart laughed at what struck him as an anticlimax, but the boys
received the assurance with acclamation. Gervasio was presented to the
young painter, and he acknowledged the introduction with a grace equal
to Gerald’s own. He had almost forgotten that he was not born a prince.
As Gerald shook hands he invited the guest, with visible hesitancy, to
throw the crumbs; but Paul generously refused the invitation, and two
minutes later the little fellows were kneeling side by side on the
coping of the fountain, while the arching pathways rang with their
laughter.
The rest of their excellencies soon appeared in a humour to fit the
morning, and the usually uneventful ‘first breakfast’ partook of the
nature of a fête. Gerald’s and Gervasio’s laughter rang free and
unchecked. The two were sitting side by side on a stone garden-seat
(the broken-nosed bust of a forgotten emperor brooding over them),
engaged for the present with twin silver bowls of bread and milk, but
with speculative eyes turned honeyward. The ghost of overnight was
resurrected and jeered at, while the ghost himself gravely passed the
cups. The sedately stepping peacock, who had joined the feast
uninvited, became the point of many morals as he lowered his feathers
in the dust to scramble for crumbs. Before the party ended, Sybert and
Dessart engaged in a good-natured bout on Sybert’s theme of yesterday
concerning Italy’s baneful beauty.
‘Paul has missed his calling!’ declared Eleanor Royston. ‘He should
have been a ward politician in New York. It is a pity to see such a
gift for impromptu eloquence wasted in private life.’
For a time Paul subsided, but their controversy closed with the laugh
on his side. Apropos of riots, his thesis was that they were on the
whole very jolly. And he upheld this shockingly barbaric view with the
plea that he always liked to see people having a good time, and that
next to sleeping in the sun and eating macaroni the Italians were never
so happy as when engaged in a row. For his part, he affirmed, he
expected to find them tearing up the golden paving-stones of paradise
to heave at each other!
The image wrung a smile from even Sybert’s gravity; It contained just
enough of truth, and not too much, to make it funny. Pietro’s
announcement, at this point, that the carriages were ready to drive
their excellencies to the festa dissolved the party in a scurry for
hats and wraps. Sybert at first had declined the festa, on the plea
that he had business in Rome. Marcia had accepted his excuse with the
simply polite statement that they would be sorry not to have him, but
Eleanor Royston had refused to let him off.
‘I’ve known a great many diplomats,’ she affirmed; ‘and though they are
supposed to be engaged with the business of nations, I have never yet
seen one who was too busy to attend a party. We shan’t let you off on
that score.’
Somewhat to Paul’s secret annoyance, and not entirely to Marcia’s
gratification, he finally consented to change his mind. As the carriage
started, Marcia glanced back toward the loggia steps, where the two
little boys, one with yellow curls and one with black, were standing
hand in hand, wistfully watching the departure.
‘Good-bye, Gerald and Gervasio,’ she called. ‘If you are very good,
I’ll bring you something nice from the festa.’
The Copley pilgrimage was not the only one bound for Genazzano that
day. They passed on the road countless bands of contadini, both on foot
and on donkey-back, journeying toward the festa, their babies and
provisions in baskets on their heads. Genazzano, on St Mark’s day,
wisely unites pleasure and piety, with masses in the cathedral and
jugglers in the piazza. The party from the villa devoted the larger
share of their time to the piazza, laughing good-naturedly at the
‘Inglese! which was shouted after them at every turn. They lunched on
the terrace of the very modest village inn, in company with a jovial
party of young Irish students from the Propaganda who seemed to treat
the miracles of the wonder-working Madonna in the light of an
ecclesiastical joke. The afternoon found the sight-seeing ardour of the
two elder ladies somewhat damped. There was to be a function in the
cathedral at three, and they stated their intention of stopping quietly
in the low-raftered parlour of the inn until it should commence.
Eleanor Royston issued a frank invitation to Sybert to explore the old
Colonna castle which surmounted the town, and he accepted with what
struck Marcia as a flattering show of interest.
In regard to Laurence Sybert she herself was of many minds. A very
considerable amount of her old antagonism for him remained, mixed with
a curiosity and interest in his movements out of all proportion to the
interest he had ever expended upon her. And to-day she was experiencing
a fresh resentment in the feeling that his attitude toward Eleanor was
more deferential than toward herself. It was a venturesome act for any
man to awaken Marcia’s pique.
Meanwhile she had Paul; and the slight cloud upon her brow vanished
quickly as she and Margaret and the young man turned toward the piazza.
Paul was in holiday humour, and the contagion of his fun was impossible
to escape. He wore a favour in his hat and a gilt medal of the Madonna
in his buttonhole; he laughed and joked with the people in the booths;
he offered his assistance to a prestidigitator who called for
volunteers; he shot dolls with an air-rifle and carried off the prize,
a gaudily decorated pipe, which he presented with a courtly bow to a
pretty peasant girl who, with frank admiration, had applauded the feat.
Finally he brought to a triumphant close a bargain of Marcia’s. She had
expressed a desire for a peculiar style of head-dress—a long silver
pin with a closed fist on the end—worn by the women from the Volscian
villages. Paul readily agreed to acquire one for her. The _spillo_ was
plucked from an astonished woman’s head and the bargaining began.
Sell it! But that was impossible. It was an heirloom! it had been in
the family for many generations; she could not think of parting with
it—not perhaps for its weight in silver?—the money was jingled before
her eyes. She wavered visibly. Paul demanded scales. They were brought
from the tobacco-shop, the tobacconist importantly presiding. The
_spillo_ was placed on one side; lire on the other—six—seven—eight.
The woman clasped her hands ecstatically as the pile grew.
Nine—ten—the scales hesitated. At eleven they went down with a thud,
and the bargain was completed. A pleased murmur rippled through the
crowd, and some one suggested, ‘Now is the signorina _sposata_.’ For,
according to Volscian etiquette, only married woman might wear the
head-dress.
Marcia shook her head with a laugh. She and Paul, standing side by
side, made an effective couple, and the peasants noted it with pleased
appreciation. Italians are quick to sympathize with a romance.
‘_Promessi sposi_,’ some one murmured, this time with an accent of
delighted assurance. Paul cast a sidewise glance at Marcia to see how
she would accept this somewhat public betrothal. She repudiated the
charge again, but with a slightly heightened colour, and the crowd
laughed gaily. As the two turned up the steep street toward the
cathedral, Paul held out his hand.
‘Give me the pin,’ he said. ‘I will carry it in my pocket for you,
since you are not entitled—as yet—to wear it.’
Marcia handed it over, trying not to look conscious of the undertone in
his voice. He was very convincing to-day; she was reconsidering her
problem.
In the crowded little piazza before the cathedral they found the rest
of the party. They all mounted the steps and stood in a group, watching
the processions of pilgrims with votive offerings. They came in bands
of fifty and a hundred, bearing banners and chanting litanies. As they
approached the church they broke off their singing to shout ‘Ave
Marias,’ mounting on their knees and kissing the steps as they came.
Marcia, looking down over the tossing mass of scarlet and yellow
kerchiefs, compared it with the great function she had witnessed in St.
Peter’s. These peasants approaching the Madonna’s shrine on their
knees, shouting themselves hoarse, their faces glowing with religious
ardour, were to her mind far the more impressive sight of the two. She
turned into the church, half carried away by the movement and colour
and intensity of the scene. There was something contagious about the
simple energy of their devotion.
The interior was packed with closely kneeling peasants, the air filled
with a blue haze of incense through which the candles on the altar
glowed dimly. The Copley party wedged their way through and stood back
at the shadow of one of the side chapels, watching the scene. Paul
dropped on his knees with the peasants, and, sketch-book in hand, set
himself surreptitiously to copying the head of a girl in front. Marcia
watched him for a few moments with an amused smile; then she glanced
away over the sea of kneeling figures. There was no mechanical devotion
here: it came from the heart, if any ever did. Ah, they were too
believing! she thought suddenly. Their piety carried them too far; it
robbed them of dignity, of individuality, of self-reliance. Almost at
her feet a woman was prostrate on the floor, kissing the stones of the
pavement in a frenzy of devotion. She turned away in a quick revulsion
of feeling such as she had experienced in St. Peter’s. And as she
turned her eyes met Laurence Sybert’s fixed upon her face. He was
standing just behind her, and he bent over and whispered:
‘You’ve seen enough of this. Come, let’s get out,’ and he made a motion
toward the sacristy entrance behind them. They stepped back, and the
crowd closed into their places.
Out in the piazza he squared his shoulders with a little laugh. ‘The
church must make itself over a bit before I shall be ready to be
received into the fold. How about you, Miss Marcia?’
‘It seemed so beautiful, their simple faith; and then suddenly—that
horrible woman—and you realize the ignorance and superstition
underneath. Everything is alike!’ she added. ‘Just as you begin to
think how beautiful it is, you catch a glimpse below the surface. It’s
awful to begin seeing hidden meanings; you can never stop.’
‘Look at that,’ he laughed, nodding toward a house where a pig was
stretched asleep in the doorway. ‘He’s evidently been left to keep
guard while the family are at the festa. I suppose you’ve noticed that
every house is Genazzano has a separate door for the chickens cut in
the bottom of the big door. It’s rather funny, isn’t it?’
Marcia regarded the pig with a laugh and a sigh.
‘Yes, it’s funny; but then, the first thing you know, you begin to
think what a low standard of life the people must have who keep their
pigs and their chickens in the house with them, and it doesn’t seem
funny any more.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You’re coming on.’
‘I’m afraid I am!’ she agreed.
As they strolled toward the upper part of the town, they came upon a
group of men and boys talking and smoking and throwing dice in a
prolonged noonday rest. It was a part of the pilgrimage from the
village of Castel Vivalanti, and the group instantly recognized Marcia.
The festal spirit of the day, joined to a double portion of wine, had
made them more boisterous than usual; and one ragged little urchin, who
had been playing the part of buffoon for the crowd, fell upon the two
signori as a fresh subject for pleasantries. He set up the usual
beggar’s whine, asking for soldi. The two paying no attention, he
changed the form of his petition.
‘Signorina,’ he implored, running along at Marcia’s side and keeping a
dirty hand extended impudently in front of her, ‘I have hunger,
signorina; I have hunger. Spare me, for the love of God, a few grains
of wheat.’
‘That’s a new formula,’ Marcia laughed. ‘It’s usually bread they want;
I never heard them ask for wheat before.’
Sybert turned on the boy, with an air of threatening, and he hastily
scrambled out of reach, though he still persevered in his petition, to
the noisy amusement of the crowd.
Marcia spread out empty hands.
‘I have no wheat,’ she said, with a shake of her head.
The youngster turned to his following, mimicking her.
‘The signorina has no wheat,’ he cried. ‘Will no one give to the
signorina? She is poor and she has hunger.’
Some one tossed a soldo. The boy pounced upon it and extended it toward
her.
‘Behold, signorina! This good man is poor, but he is generous. He
offers you money to get some wheat.’
Marcia laughed at the play in thorough enjoyment, while Sybert, with an
angry light in his eye, seized the boy by the collar and cuffed him
soundly.
‘Mr. Sybert,’ she cried, ‘take care; you’ll hurt him!’
‘I mean to hurt him,’ he said grimly, as with a final cuff he dropped
him over the side of the bank.
The crowd jeered at his downfall as loudly as they had jeered at his
impudence, and the two turned a corner and left them behind.
‘You needn’t have struck him,’ Marcia said. ‘The boy didn’t mean
anything beyond being funny. He is one of my best friends; his name is
Beppo, and he lives next door to the baker’s shop.’
‘If that is a specimen of your friends,’ Sybert answered dryly, ‘my
advice is that you shake their acquaintance.’
‘I don’t mind a little impertinence,’ she said lightly. ‘It’s at least
better than whining.’
‘I told you yesterday, Miss Marcia, that I didn’t think you ought to be
running about the country alone—I think it even less to-day. It isn’t
safe up here in the mountain towns, where the people aren’t used to
foreigners.’
‘Why don’t you suggest to Uncle Howard that he engage a nurse for me?’
‘I begin to think you need one!’
Marcia laid a light hand on his arm.
‘Mr. Sybert, please don’t speak to me so harshly.’
‘I’ll speak to your uncle—that’s what I’ll do,’ he retorted.
They had by this time reached the castle, and having crossed the
drawbridge and the stone courtyard, they came out on the other side,
with the noisy little town left suddenly behind. The mountains rose
above them, the valley lay beneath, and before them a straight, grassy
road stretched into the hills, bordered by the tall arches of an old
aqueduct. They strolled along, talking idly, Marcia well in command of
the situation. There was a touch of audacity, even of provocation,
underneath her glance, and Sybert was amusedly aware of the fact that
he was being flirted with. Quite to Marcia’s astonishment, he met her
on her own ground; he accepted the half-challenge in her manner and was
never the first to lower his eyes. They had come to a bank starred pink
with cyclamen and backed by one of the tall arches of the aqueduct.
‘Suppose we sit down and look at the view,’ he suggested.
Marcia seated herself on a projecting block of masonry, while Sybert
lounged on the grass at her side.
‘Mr. Melville told me the other day,’ he remarked presently, ‘that he
remembers having seen your mother when she was a little girl.’
Marcia nodded and laughed. ‘He told me about it—he says she was the
worst tom-boy he ever saw.’
‘It was a very pretty picture he drew—I wonder if you ever rode the
colts bareback?’
‘My mother was brought up on a Southern plantation; I, in a New York
house and a Paris convent—there weren’t any colts to ride.’
‘And your mother died when you were a little girl?’
‘When I was twelve.’
‘Ah, that was hard,’ he said, with quick sympathy.
She glanced up in half surprise. It was the first time she had ever
heard him say anything so kindly.
‘And the convent in Paris?’ he asked. ‘How did that happen?’
‘Some one suggested it to my father, and I suppose it struck him as an
excellent way to dispose of me. Not that he isn’t an appreciative
parent,’ she added quickly, in response to an expression on his face;
‘but the education of a daughter is a problem to a business man.’
‘I should think it might be,’ he agreed. ‘And how did the convent go?’
‘Not very well. I didn’t learn anything but prayers and French, and I
was dreadfully homesick.’
‘And then?’
‘Oh, one or two governesses and a boarding-school, and after that
college.’ Marcia laughed. ‘You should have seen my father when I
suggested the college. He clutched at the idea like a drowning man; it
was another four years’ reprieve.’
‘It’s a pity,’ he remarked, ‘that the French method of marrying one’s
daughter offhand as soon as she gets out of school doesn’t prevail in
America.’
‘I really did feel guilty when I graduated, the poor man looked so
dazed through it all. He asked me if I would like to take a little trip
into Venezuela with him to look into some mines. It would have been
fun, wouldn’t it?’ she asked. ‘I should have liked to go.’
‘But, being charitable, you declined?’
‘Yes, and having another plan in my head. It had been years since I had
seen Uncle Howard, and I thought it would be nice to come over and live
with him for a while.’
‘And so here you are in Genazzano.’
‘Here I am,’ she agreed. ‘But as soon as papa is ready to settle down
respectably like other people, I am going back to keep house for him,
and I shall take with me some fourteenth-century Italian furniture, and
some nice Italian servants, and give nice little Italian dinners.’
‘And shall you invite me sometimes?’
‘Drop in whenever you wish.’
Marcia began to laugh.
‘Well?’ he inquired. ‘What is so funny?’
‘To be talking to you this way—I shouldn’t have issued that invitation
a week ago. You couldn’t help yourself yesterday,’ she added; ‘Aunt
Katherine made you come; but really it’s your own fault to-day.’
‘Is that the impression I gave you? I am afraid I must have very bad
manners.’
‘You have—rather bad,’ she agreed.
‘You hit straight,’ he laughed. ‘No,’ he added presently; ‘Aunt
Katherine had nothing to do with our walk to-day. If you care to know,
I’ll tell you why I wanted to come. Yesterday afternoon I took a ride
with a most charming young woman, and I thought I’d like to renew the
acquaintance.’
‘If that’s intended for a compliment, it’s of a very doubtful nature.
You have known this same charming young woman for the last three
months, and have never shown any marked desire for her company before.’
‘I was blind, but I have been made to see.’
He commenced rolling a cigarette in a lazy, half-amused fashion, while
Marcia occupied an interval of silence by checking the progress of a
black beetle who found himself on the stone beside her, and who seemed
in a great hurry to get somewhere else. In whichever way he turned, a
mountain of a green leaf sprang up in his path. He ran wildly in a
circle, vainly seeking an outlet, his six little legs twittering with
anxiety.
Sybert stretched out a sympathetic hand and dropped him over the bank
to a place of safety.
‘Now why must you do that?’ Marcia inquired.
‘A sense of fellow-feeling—I’ve watched too many women playing with
too many men not to know how the poor beast felt. His progress was
thwarted at every turn, without his being able to comprehend any
underlying motive or reason or law.’
‘It was good for him,’ she affirmed. ‘I was giving him a new
experience—was widening his horizon. When I finally let him go he
would have been so thankful to think of the danger he had escaped, that
he would have been twice as happy a beetle as ever before.’
‘That is one way of looking at it,’ Sybert agreed.
Marcia watched him a moment speculatively. She was thinking about the
Contessa Torrenieri.
‘Mr. Sybert,’ she suggested, ‘there are a lot of things I should like
to know about you.’
‘I can think of nothing in my past that ought to be hidden.’
‘These are things that you wouldn’t tell me.’
‘Try me and see.’
‘Anything I choose to ask?’
‘I am at your disposal.’
‘Have you ever been in love with any one?’
He glanced up from his cigarette with an amused stare. ‘What’s this—a
confessional?’
‘Oh, no—only you don’t look as if you’d ever done such a foolish
thing, and I just wondered——’
‘Half a dozen times.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, I dare say not—really,’ he laughed. ‘In my cub days I used to
be—well, interested sometimes.’
‘But you outgrew it?’
‘It would be a rash man who would affirm that! You never can tell
what’s waiting for you around the next corner.’
She would have liked to put a question or so in regard to the contessa,
but instead she remarked, ‘There are some other things I’d like to ask
you.’
‘I’m not so sure I’ll answer if that’s a specimen.’
‘Why were you carrying a revolver yesterday?’
‘You strike me as a very inquisitive young woman, Miss Marcia.’
‘You strike me as a very mysterious man, Mr. Sybert.’
‘Why was I carrying a revolver? For a very simple reason. I have been
travelling through the south, helping to quiet the rioters; and as that
is not a popular occupation, I thought it wisest to go armed. A
revolver is an excellent thing with which to persuade people, though in
all probability I shall never have any occasion to use it. I hope you
are satisfied.’
‘Thank you,’ said Marcia. ‘Not that I believe you at all,’ she added
with a laugh.
He regarded her a moment with a slightly perplexed frown. ‘What on
earth do you take me for, Miss Marcia? An anarchist, a bandit, a second
Fra Diavolo in disguise? I am nothing so picturesque, I assure
you—merely a peaceful private citizen of the United States.’
‘How do you come to know the baker’s son, Tarquinio, so well?’
‘I think I’ve answered questions enough. Suppose we have a confession
from you, Miss Marcia. Have you ever been in love?’
Marcia rose. ‘It’s a quarter past four, and we ought to be going back.
The Roystons have to catch the evening train into Rome.’