Kitabı oku: «The Wheat Princess», sayfa 20

CHAPTER XXVI

Marcia woke at dawn with the sun in her eyes. She started up dazedly at finding herself dressed in her white evening gown, lying on the couch instead of in bed. Then in a moment the events of yesterday flashed back. The floor was covered with broken glass, and on the wall opposite a dark spot among the rose-garlands showed where Pietro’s misaimed bullet had lodged. On the terrace balustrade below her window two soldiers were sitting, busily throwing dice. They lent an absurd air of unreality to the scene. She stepped to the open doors of the balcony and drew a deep, delighted breath of the fresh morning air. Rome in the west was still sleeping, but every separate crag of the Sabines was glowing a soft pink, and the newly risen sun was hanging like a halo behind the old monastery. It was a day filled with promise.

The next moment she had brought her thoughts back from the distant horizon to the contemplation of homelier matters nearer at hand. Mingled with the early fragrance of roses and dew was the subtly penetrating odour of boiling coffee. Marcia sniffed and considered. Some one was making coffee for the soldiers, who were to be relieved at the ‘Ave Maria.’ She reviewed the possible cooks. Not Granton. The soldiers were Italians, and, for all Granton cared, they could perish from hunger on their way back to Palestrina. Not her aunt. In all probability, she did not know how to make coffee. Not her uncle. He was hors de concours with his wounded arm. The Melvilles! They would not have known where to look for the kitchen. She interrupted her speculations to exchange last night’s evening gown for a fresh blue muslin, and her hasty glance at the mirror as she stole out on tiptoe told her that the slight pallor which comes from three hours’ sleep was not unbecoming. She crept downstairs through the dim hall and paused a second by the open door of the loggia; her eyes involuntarily sought the spot outside the salon window. The rug was back in its place again, and everything was in its usual order. She felt thankful to some one; it was easier so to throw the matter from her mind.

She approached the kitchen softly and paused on the threshold with a reconnoitring glance. The big stone-floored room, with its smoky rafters overhead, was dark always, but especially so at the sunrise hour; its deep-embrasured windows looked to the west. In the farthest, darkest corner, before the big, brick-walled stove, some one was standing with his back turned toward her, and her heart quickened its beating perceptibly. She stood very still for several minutes, watching him; she would hypnotise him to turn around; but before she had fairly commenced with the business, he had picked up the poker by the wrong end and dropped it again. The observation which he made in Italian was quite untranslatable. Marcia tittered and he wheeled about.

‘That’s not fair,’ he objected. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything so bad if I had known you were listening.’

‘Do you know what we do with Gerald when he swears in Italian?’

He shook his head.

‘We wash his mouth with soap.’

‘I hope it doesn’t happen often,’ he shuddered.

‘He speaks very fluent Italian—nearly as fluent as yours.’

‘Suppose we change the subject.’

‘Very well,’ she agreed, advancing to the opposite side of the long central table. ‘What shall we talk about?’

‘We haven’t said good morning.’

She dropped him a smiling curtsy. ‘Good morning, Mr. Sybert.’

‘Mr. Sybert! You haven’t changed your mind overnight, have you?’

Her eyes were more reassuring than her speech. ‘N-no.’

‘No what?’

‘Sir!’ She laughed.

He came around to her side of the table, and faced her with his hands in his jacket pockets.

‘You’ve never in your life pronounced my name. I don’t believe you know it!’

She whispered.

‘Say it louder.’

‘It sounds too familiar,’ she objected, backing against the wall with impudently laughing eyes. ‘You’re so—so sort of old—like Uncle Howard.’

‘Oh, I know you’re young, but you needn’t put on such airs about it. You don’t own all the youth in the world.’

‘Thirty-five!’ she murmured, with a wondering shake of her head.

‘Ah—thirty-five. A very nice age. Just the right age, in fact, to make you mind me. Oh, you needn’t laugh; I’m going to do it fast enough. And right here we’ll begin.’ He folded his arms with a very fierce frown, but with a smile on his lips, quizzical, humorous, comprehending, kindly—the finished result of so many smiles that had gone before. ‘The business in hand, my dear young woman, is to find out whether or not you happen to know the name of the man you’ve promised to marry. Come, let me hear it; say it out loud.’

Marcia looked back tantalizingly a moment, and then, after an inquiring glance about the room as if she were searching to recall it, she dropped her lids and pronounced it with her eyes on the floor.

‘Laurence.’

He unfolded his arms.

‘The coffee’s boiling over!’ Marcia exclaimed.

‘Kiss me good morning.’

‘The coffee’s boiling over.’

‘I don’t care if it is.’

The coffee boiled over with an angry spurt that deluged the stove with hissing steam. Marcia was patently too anxious for its safety to give her attention to anything else. Sybert stalked over and viciously jerked it back, and she picked up the plate of rolls and ran for the door. He caught up with her in the hall.

‘I know why you discharged Marietta,’ he threw out.

‘Why?’

‘If I were a French cook with a moustache and a goatee and a fetching white cap, and you were a black-eyed little Italian nursemaid with gold ear-rings in your ears, I should very frequently let things burn.’

‘Oh,’ Marcia laughed. ‘And I should probably let the little boy I ought to be looking after fall over the balustrade and break his front tooth while I was sitting on the door-step smiling at you.’

‘And so we should be torn apart—there was a tragedy!’ he mused compassionately. ‘I hadn’t realized it before. It proves that you must suffer yourself before you can appreciate the sufferings of others.’

‘French cooks with fetching caps have elastic hearts.’

‘Ah,’ said he, ‘and so have black-eyed little Italian nursemaids—I’m glad you’re not an Italian nursemaid, Marcia.’

‘I’m glad you’re not a French cook—Laurence.’ And then she laughed. ‘Will you tell me something?’

‘Anything you wish.’

‘Were you ever in love with the Contessa Torrenieri?’

‘I used to fancy I was something of the sort nine or ten years ago. But, thank heaven, she was looking for a count.’

‘I’m glad she found him!’ Marcia breathed.

As they crossed the terrace to the little table at the corner of the grove where the afternoon before—it seemed a century—Mrs. Copley and Marcia had taken tea, one of the soldiers came hastily forward. ‘Permit me, signorina,’ he said with a bow, taking the plate from her hands. Marcia relinquished it with a ‘Grazia tanto’ and a friendly smile. They were so polite, so good-natured, these Italians! Cups were brought, the table was spread, and Marcia poured the coffee with as much ceremony as if she were presiding at an afternoon reception. The two, at the soldiers’ invitation, stayed and shared the meal with them. Marcia never forgot that sunrise breakfast-party on the terrace—it was Villa Vivalanti’s last social function.

She watched Sybert’s intercourse with these men with something like amazement, feeling that she had still to know him, that, his character was in the end the mystery it had seemed. With his hand on their shoulders, he was chatting to the group as if he had known them all his life, cordial, friendly, intimate, with an air of good-comradeship, of perfect comprehension, that she had never seen him employ toward even his staunchest friends of the Embassy. One of the soldiers, noticing the direction of her glance, informed her that the signore had been up all night, alternately talking to them and pacing the walks of the ilex grove, and he added that the signore was a galantuomo—a gentleman and a good fellow.

‘What did he talk about?’ she asked.

‘Many, many things,’ said the man. ‘Italia, and the people’s miseria, and the priests, and the wine of Sicily, and the King and the Camorra, and (he looked a trifle conscious) our sweethearts. He is not like other forestieri, the signore; he understands. He is a good fellow.’

And then the young soldier—he was most confiding—told her about his own sweetheart. Her name was Lucia and she lived in Lucca. She was waiting for him to finish his service, and then they would be married and keep a carved-wood shop in Florence. That was his trade—carving wood to sell to the forestieri. It was a beautiful trade; he had learned it in Switzerland, and he had learned it well. The signorina should judge if she ever came to Florence. How much longer did he have to serve? Four months, and then!—He rolled his eyes in the direction where Lucca might be supposed to lie.

Marcia smiled sympathetically. Lucia was a beautiful name, she said.

Was it not a beautiful name? he returned in an ecstasy. But the signorina should see Lucia herself! Words failed him at this point. ‘Santa Lucia,’ he murmured softly, and he hummed the tune under his breath.

Marcia unclasped a chain of gold beads from her neck and slipped it into his hand. ‘When you go back to Lucca give this to Lucia from me—con amore.’

‘Here, here! what is this?’ said Sybert in English, coming up behind. ‘Do I find you giving love-tokens to a strange young man?’

Marcia flushed guiltily at the detection. ‘It’s for a friend of mine in Lucca,’ she said, nodding over her shoulder to the young soldier as they turned back toward the loggia.

Sybert laughed softly.

‘What are you laughing at?’ she asked.

‘I sent a wedding present to Lucia myself.’

They strolled to the end of the loggia and stood by the balustrade, looking off into the hills. The fresh, dewy scents of early morning were in the air, and all the world seemed beautiful and young. Marcia thought of Sybert pacing up and down the dark ilex walks while the villa slept, and of the dreadful thing he had spoken last night in that wild moment of despair. She searched his face questioningly. There were shadows under his eyes, the marks of last night’s vigil; but in his eyes a steady calm. He caught the look and read her thoughts.

‘That’s all over, Marcia,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve fought it out. You mustn’t think of it again. I don’t very often lose control of myself, but I did last night. Once in thirty-five years,’ he smiled, ‘a man ought to be forgiven for being a little melodramatic.’

‘Will you—really be happy?’ she asked.

‘Marcia, America is for me, as for so many poor Italians, the promised land. I’m going home to you.’

She shook her head sadly. ‘That—won’t be enough.’

‘It’s all I have, and it’s all I want. There’s not room in my heart for anything but you, Marcia.’

‘Don’t say that,’ she cried. ‘That’s why I love you—because there’s room in your heart for so many other people. America is your own country. Let it take the place of Italy.’

He studied the Campagna, silent, a moment, while a shadow crossed his face. He shook his head slowly and looked back with melancholy eyes.

‘I don’t know, Marcia. That may come later—but—not just now. You can’t understand what Italy means to me. I was born here; I learned to speak the language before I did English; all that other men feel for their country, for their homes, I feel for Italy. And these poor, hard-working, patient people—I’ve done them harm instead of good. Oh, I see the truth; Italy must do for herself. The foreigners can’t help, and I’m a foreigner like the rest.’

‘Ah, Laurence,’ she pleaded, ‘don’t you see that you’re an American, and that nothing, nothing can stamp it out? It’s all a mistake; your place isn’t here—it’s at home. Every man can surely do his best work in his own country, and America needs good men. Do you remember what you said at Uncle Howard’s dinner that last night we were in Rome? That to be a loyal citizen of the world was the best a man could do? But you can’t be a loyal citizen of the world unless you are first of all a loyal citizen of your own country. America may be crude and it may have a good many faults, but it’s our country just the same, and we ought to love it better than any other. You do love it, don’t you? Tell me you do. Tell me you’re glad that you’re an American.’

She put her hands on his shoulders and looked up with glowing eyes and cheeks that burned.

As he watched her a picture flashed over him of what it meant. He thought of the vast country, with its richness, its possibilities, its contrasts. He thought of its vitality and force; its energy and nervousness and daring. And for a brief instant he felt himself a part of it. A sudden wave swept over him of that strange, irrational, romantic love of fatherland which is fundamental underneath the polish, underneath the wickedness, in every man in every land. For a second he thrilled with it too; and then, as his eye wandered to the great plain beneath them, the old love—his first love—rushed back. He bent over and kissed her with sudden tears in his eyes.

‘Some day, Marcia, I will tell you that I’m proud to be an American. Don’t ask me just yet.’

And as they stood there, hand in hand, there was borne to them from the mountain-top above the sweet, prophetic sound of the bells of Castel Vivalanti ringing the Angelus; while below them on the horizon, like a great, far-reaching sea, stretched the Campagna, haunting, mysterious, insatiable—the Roman Campagna, that has demanded as sacrifice the lives of so many miserable peasants, that has lured from distant homes so many strangers and held them prisoners to its spell—the beautiful, deadly, desolate land that has inspired more passionate love than any land on earth.