Kitabı oku: «The Wheat Princess», sayfa 7

CHAPTER X

Sybert presently returned and dropped into the seat opposite Marcia; the guard slammed the door and the train pulled slowly out into the Campagna. They were both occupied with their own thoughts, and as neither found much pleasure in talking to the other, and both knew it, they made little pretence at conversation.

Marcia’s excited mood had passed, and she leaned forward with her chin in her hand, watching rather pensively the soft Roman twilight as it crept over the Campagna. What she really saw, however, was the sunlit cloister of St. Paul Without the Walls and Paul Dessart’s face as he talked to her. Was she really in love with him, she asked herself, or was it just—Italy? She did not know and she did not want to think. It was so much pleasanter merely to drift, and so very difficult to make up one’s mind. Everything had been so care-free before, why must he bring the question to an issue? It was a question she did not wish to decide for a long, long time. Would he be willing to wait—to wait for an indefinite future that in the end might never come? Patience was not Paul’s way. Suppose he refused to drift; suppose he insisted on his answer now—did she wish to give him up? No; quite frankly, she did not. She pictured him as he stood there in the cloister, with the warm sunlight and shadow playing about him, with his laughing, boyish face for the instant sober, his eager, insistent eyes bent upon her, his words for once stammering and halting. He was very attractive, very convincing; and yet she sighed. Life for her was still in the future. The world was new and full and varied, and experience was beckoning. There were many things to see and do, and she wanted to be free.

The short southern twilight faded quickly and a full moon took its place in a cloudless turquoise sky. The light flooded the dim compartment with a shimmering brilliancy, and outside it was almost dazzling in its glowing whiteness. Marcia leaned against the window, gazing out at the rolling plain. The tall arches of Aqua Felice were silhouetted darkly against the sky, and in the distance the horizon was broken by the misty outline of the Sabine hills. Now and then they passed a lonely group of farm-buildings set in a cluster of eucalyptus trees, planted against the fever; but for the most part the scene was barren and desolate, with scarcely a suggestion of actual, breathing human light. On the Appian Way were visible the gaunt outlines of Latin tombs, and occasionally the ruined remains of a mediaeval watch-tower. The picture was almost too perfect in its beauty; it was like the painted back drop for a spectacular play. Scarcely real, and yet one of the oldest things in the world—the rolling Campagna, the arches of the aqueducts, Rome behind and the Sabines before. So it had been for centuries; thousands of human lives were wrapped up in it. That was its charm. The picture was not inanimate, but pathetically human. As she looked far off across the plain so mournfully beautiful in its desolation, a sudden rush of feeling swept over her, a rush of that insane love of Italy which has engulfed so many foreigners in the waters of Lethe. She knew now how Paul felt. Italy! Italy! She loved it too.

A half-sob rose in her throat and her eyes filled with tears. She caught herself quickly and shrank back in the corner, with a glance at the man across to see if he were watching her. He was not. He sat rigid, looking out at the Campagna under half-shut eyelids. One hand was plunged deep in his pocket and the other lay on the dog’s head to keep him quiet. Marcia noticed in surprise that while he appeared so calm, his fingers opened and shut nervously. She glanced up into his face again. He was staring at the picture before him as impassively as at a blank wall; but his eyes seemed more deep-set than usual and the under shadows darker. She half abstractedly fell to studying his face, wondering what was behind those eyes; what he could be thinking of.

He suddenly looked up and caught her gaze.

‘I beg your pardon?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘You looked as if you did,’ he said with a slight laugh, and turned away from the light. And now Marcia had the uncomfortable feeling that from under his drooping lids he was watching her. She turned back to the window again and tried to centre her attention on the shifting scene outside, but she was oppressively conscious of her silent companion. His face was in the shadow and she could not tell whether his eyes were open or shut. She tried to think of something to talk about, but no relevant subject presented itself. She experienced a nervous sense of relief when the train finally stopped at Palestrina.

The station-man, after some delay, found them a carriage with a reasonably rested-looking horse. As Sybert helped Marcia in he asked if she would object to letting a poor fellow with an unbeautifully large bundle sit on the front seat with the driver.

‘We won’t meet any one at this time of night,’ he added. ‘He’s going to Castel Vivalanti and it’s a long walk.’

‘Certainly he may ride,’ Marcia returned. ‘It makes no difference to me whether we meet any one or not.’

‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ Sybert smiled. ‘I didn’t mean to be disagreeable. Some ladies would object, you know. Tarquinio,’ he called as the Italian with the bed-quilt shuffled past. ‘The signorina invites you to ride, since we are going the same way.’

Tarquinio thanked the signorina with Italian courtesy, boosted up his bundle, and climbed up after it. Marcellus stretched himself comfortably in the bottom of the carriage, and with a canine sigh of content went peaceably to sleep. They set out between moonlit olive orchards and vineyards with the familiar daytime details of farm-buildings and ruins softened into a romantic beauty. Behind them stretched the outline of the Alban mountains, the moonlight catching the white walls of two twin villages which crowned the heights; and before them rose the more desolate Sabines, standing fold upon fold against the sky. It was for the most part a silent drive. Sybert at first, aware that he was more silent than politeness permitted, made a few casual attempts at conversation, and then with an apparently easy conscience folded his arms and returned to his thoughts. Marcia, too, had her thoughts, and the romance of the flower-scented moonlit night gave them their direction. Had Paul been there to urge his case anew, Italy would have helped in the pleading. But Paul had made a tiny mistake that day—he had taken her at her word and let her go alone—and the tiniest of mistakes is often big with consequences.

Once Sybert shifted his position and his hand accidentally touched Marcia’s on the seat between them. ‘Pardon me,’ he murmured, and folded his arms again. She looked up at him quickly. The touch had run through her like an electric shock. Who was this man? she asked herself suddenly. What was he underneath? He seemed to be burning up inside; and she had always considered him apathetic, indifferent. She looked at him wide-eyed; she had never seen him like this. He reminded her of a suppressed volcano that would burst out some day with a sudden explosion. She again set herself covertly to studying his face. His character seemed an anomaly; it contradicted itself. Was it good or bad, simple or complex? Marcia did not have the key. She put together all the things she knew of him, all the things she had heard—the result was largely negative; the different pieces of evil cancelled each other. She knew him in society—he was several different persons there, but what was he when not in society? In his off hours? This afternoon, for example. Why should he be so at home by the Theatre of Marcellus? It was a long distance from the Embassy. And the man on the front seat, who was he? She suddenly interrupted the silence with a question. Sybert started at if he had forgotten she were there.

She repeated it: ‘Is that man on the front seat Tarquinio Paterno who keeps a little trattoria in Rome?’

‘Yes,’ he returned, bringing a somewhat surprised gaze to rest upon her. ‘How do you come to know his name?’

‘Oh, I just guessed. I know Domenico Paterno, the Castel Vivalanti baker, and he told me about his son, Tarquinio. It’s not such a very common name; so when you said this man was going to the village, and when I heard you call him Tarquinio, I thought—why were you surprised?’ she broke off. ‘Is there anything more to know about him?’

‘You seem to have his family history pretty straight,’ Sybert shrugged.

They lapsed into silence again, and Marcia did not attempt to break it a second time.

When they came to the turning where the steep road to Castel Vivalanti branches off from the highway, the driver halted to let Tarquinio get out. But Marcia remonstrated, that the bundle was too heavy for him to carry up the hill, and she told the man to drive on up to the gates of the town.

They jogged on up the winding ascent between orchards of olive and almond trees fringed with the airy leafage of spring. Above them the clustering houses of the village clung to the hilltop, tier above tier, the jagged sky-line of roofs and towers cut out clearly against the light.

Marcia had never visited Castel Vivalanti except in the unequivocal glare of day, which shows the dilapidated little town in all its dilapidation. But the moonlight changes all. The grey stone walls stretched above them now like some grim fortress city of the middle ages. And the old round tower, with its ruined drawbridge, looked as if it had seen dark deeds and kept the secret. It was just such a stronghold as the Cenci was murdered in.

They came to a stand before the tall arch of the Porta della Luna. While Tarquinio was climbing down and hoisting the bundle to his shoulder, Marcia’s attention was momentarily attracted to a group of boys quarrelling over a game of morro in the gateway.

Suddenly, in the midst of Tarquinio’s expressions of thanks to the signorina for helping a poor man on his journey, a frightened shriek rang out in a child’s high voice, followed by a succession of long-drawn screams. The morro-players stopped their game and looked at each other with startled eyes; and then, after a moment of hesitation, went on with the play. At the first cry Sybert had leaped from the carriage, and seizing one of the boys by the shoulder, he demanded the cause.

The boy wriggled himself free with a gesture of unconcern.

‘Gervasio Delano’s mother is beating him. He always makes a great fuss because he is afraid.’

‘What is it?’ Marcia cried as she sprang from the carriage and ran up to Sybert.

‘Some child’s mother is beating him.’

The two, without waiting for any further explanations, turned in under the gate and hurried along the narrow way to the left, in the direction of the sounds. People had gathered in little groups in the doorways, and were shaking their heads and talking excitedly. One woman, as she caught sight of Marcia and Sybert, called out reassuringly that Teresa wasn’t hurting the boy; he always cried harder than he was struck.

By the time they had reached the low doorway whence the sounds issued, the screams had died down to hysterical sobs. They plunged into the room which opened from the street, and then paused. It was so dark that for a moment they could not see anything. The only light came from a flickering oil-lamp burning before an image of the Madonna. But as their eyes became accustomed to the darkness they made out a stoutly built peasant woman standing at one end of the room and grasping in her hand an ox-goad such as the herdsmen on the Campagna use. For a moment they thought she was the only person there, until a low sob proclaimed the presence of a child who was crouching in the farthest corner.

‘What do you want?’ the woman asked, scowling angrily at the intruders.

‘Have you been striking the child with that goad?’ Sybert demanded.

‘I strike the child with what I please,’ the woman retorted. ‘He is a lazy good-for-nothing and he stole the soup.’

Marcia drew the little fellow from the corner where he was sobbing steadily with long catches in his breath. His tears had gained such a momentum that he could not stop, but he clung to her convulsively, realizing that a deliverer of some sort was at hand. She turned him to the light and revealed a great red welt across his cheek where one of the blows had chanced to fall.

‘It’s outrageous! The woman ought to be arrested!’ said Marcia, angrily.

Sybert took the lamp from the wall and bent over to look at him.

‘Poor little devil! He looks as if he needed soup,’ he muttered.

The woman broke in shrilly again to say that he was eleven years old and never brought in a single soldo. She slaved night and day to keep him fed, and she had children enough of her own to give to.

‘Whose child is he?’ Sybert demanded.

‘He was my husband’s,’ the woman returned; ‘and that husband is dead and I have a new one. The boy is in the way. I can’t be expected to support him forever. It is time he was earning something for himself.’

Marcia sat down on a low stool and drew the boy to her.

‘What can we do?’ she asked, looking helplessly at Sybert. ‘It won’t do to leave him here. She would simply beat him to death as soon as our backs are turned.’

‘I’m afraid she would,’ he acknowledged. ‘Of course I can threaten her with the police, but I don’t believe it will do much good.’ He was thinking that she might better adopt the boy than the dog, but he did not care to put his thoughts into words.

‘I know!’ she exclaimed as if in answer to his unspoken suggestion; ‘I’ll take him home for an errand-boy. He will be very useful about the place. Tell the woman, please, that I’m going to keep him, and make her understand that she has nothing to do with him any more.’

‘Would Mrs. Copley like to have him at the villa?’ Sybert inquired doubtfully. ‘It’s hardly fair–’

‘Oh, yes. She won’t mind if I insist—and I shall insist. Tell the woman, please.’

Sybert told the woman rather curtly that she need not be at the expense of feeding the boy any longer, the signorina would take him home to run errands.

The woman quickly changed her manner at this, and refused to part with him. Since she had cared for him when he was little, it was time for him to repay the debt now that she was growing old.

Sybert succinctly explained that she had forfeited all right to the child, and that if she made any trouble he would tell the police, who, he added parenthetically, were his dearest friends. Without further parleying, he picked up the boy and they walked out of the house, followed on the woman’s part by angry prayers that ‘apoplexies’ might fall upon them and their descendants.

Curious groups of people had gathered outside the house, and they separated silently to let them pass. At the gateway the morro-players stopped their game to crowd around the carriage with shrill inquiries as to what was going to be done with Gervasio. The driver leaned from his seat and stared in stupid bewilderment at this rapid change of fares. But he whipped up his horse and started with dispatch, apparently moved by the belief that if he gave them time enough they would invite all Castel Vivalanti to drive.

As they rattled down the hill Sybert broke out into an amused laugh. ‘I fear your aunt won’t thank us, Miss Marcia, for turning Villa Vivalanti into a foundling-asylum.’

‘She won’t care when we tell her about it,’ said Marcia, comfortably. She glanced down at the thin little face resting on Sybert’s shoulder. ‘Poor little fellow! He looks hungrier than Marcellus. The woman said he was eleven, and he’s scarcely bigger than Gerald.’

Sybert closed his fingers around Gervasio’s tiny brown wrist. ‘He’s pretty thin,’ he remarked; ‘but that can soon be remedied. These peasant children are hardy little things when they have half a chance.’ He looked down at the boy, who was watching their faces with wide-open, excited eyes, half frightened at the strange language. ‘You mustn’t be afraid, Gervasio,’ he reassured him in Italian. ‘The signorina is taking you home with her to Villa Vivalanti, where you won’t be whipped any more and will have all you want to eat. You must be a good boy and do everything she tells you.’

Gervasio’s eyes opened still wider. ‘Will the signorina give me chocolate?’ he asked.

‘He’s one of the children I gave chocolate to, and he remembers it!’ Marcia said delightedly. ‘I thought his face was familiar. Yes, Gervasio,’ she added in her very careful Italian. ‘I will give you chocolate if you always do what you are told, but not every day, because chocolate is not good for little boys. You must eat bread and meat and soup, and grow big and strong like—like Signor Siberti here.’

Sybert laughed and Marcia joined him.

‘I begin to appreciate Aunt Katherine’s anxiety for Gerald—do you suppose there is any danger of malaria at Villa Vivalanti?’

For the rest of the drive they chatted quite gaily over the adventure. Sybert for the time dismissed whatever he had on his mind; and as for Marcia—St. Paul’s cloisters were behind in Rome. As they turned into the avenue the lights of the villa gleamed brightly through the trees.

‘See, Gervasio,’ said Sybert. ‘That is where you are going to live.’

Gervasio nodded, too awed to speak. Presently he whispered, ‘Shall I see the little principino?’

‘The little principino? what does he mean?’ Marcia asked.

‘The little principino with yellow hair,’ Gervasio repeated.

‘Gerald!’ Sybert laughed. ‘The ‘principino’ is good for a free-born American. Ah—and here is the old prince,’ he added, as the carriage wheels grated on the gravel before the loggia and Copley stepped out from the hall to see who had come.

‘Hello! is that you, Sybert?’ he called out in surprise. ‘And, Marcia! I thought you had decided to stay in town—what in the deuce have you brought with you?’

‘A boy and a dog, O Prince,’ said Sybert, as he set Gervasio on his feet. ‘Miss Marcia must plead guilty to the dog, but I will take half the blame for the boy.’

Gervasio and Marcellus were conveyed into the hall, and it would be difficult to say which was the more frightened of the two. Marcellus slunk under a chair and whined at the lights, and Gervasio looked after him as if he were tempted to follow. Mrs. Copley, attracted by the disturbance, appeared from the salon, and a medley of questions and explanations ensued. Gervasio, meanwhile, sat up very straight and very scared, clutching the arms of the big carved chair in which Sybert had placed him.

‘We thought he might be useful to run errands,’ Sybert suggested as they finished the account of the boy’s maltreatment.

‘Poor child!’ said Mrs. Copley. ‘We can find something for him to do. He is small, but he looks intelligent. I have always intended to have a little page—or he might even do as a tiger for Gerald’s pony-cart.’

‘No, Aunt Katherine,’ expostulated Marcia. ‘I shan’t have him dressed in livery. I don’t think it’s right to turn him into a servant before he’s old enough to choose.’

‘The position of a trained servant is a much higher one than he would ever fill if left to himself. He is only a peasant child, my dear.’

‘He is a psychological problem,’ she declared. ‘I am going to prove that environment is everything and heredity’s nothing, and I shan’t have him dressed in livery. I found him, and he’s mine—at least half mine.’

She glanced across at Sybert and he nodded approval.

‘I will turn my share of the authority over to you, Miss Marcia, since it appears to be in such good hands.’

‘Marcia shall have her way,’ said Mr. Copley. ‘We’ll let Gervasio be an unofficial page and postpone the question of livery for the present.’

‘He can play with Gerald,’ she suggested. ‘We were wishing the other night that he had some one to play with, and Gervasio will be just the person; it will be good for his Italian.’

‘I suspect that Gervasio’s Italian may not be useful for drawing-room purposes,’ her uncle laughed.

‘I shall send him to college,’ she added, her mind running ahead of present difficulties, ‘and prove that peasants are really as bright as princes, if they have the same chance. He’ll turn out a genius like—like Crispi.’

‘Heaven forbid!’ exclaimed Sybert, but he examined Marcia with a new interest in his eyes.

‘We can decide on the young man’s career later,’ Copley suggested. ‘He seems to be embarrassed by these personalities.’

Gervasio, with all these august eyes upon him, was on the point of breaking out into one of his old-time wails when Mrs. Copley fortunately diverted the attention by inquiring if they had dined.

‘Neither Mr. Sybert nor I have had any dinner,’ Marcia returned, ‘and I shouldn’t be surprised if Gervasio has missed several. But Marcellus, under the chair there, has had his,’ she added.

Mrs. Copley recalling her duties as hostess, a jangling of bells ensued. Pietro appeared, and stared at Gervasio with as much astonishment as is compatible with the office of butler. Mrs. Copley ordered dinner for two in the dining-room and for one in the kitchen, and turned the boy over to Pietro’s care.

‘Oh, let’s have him eat with us, just for to-night.’ Marcia pleaded. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Mr. Sybert? He’s so hungry; I love to watch hungry little boys eat.’

‘Marcia!’ expostulated her aunt in disgust. ‘How can you say such things? The child is barefooted.’

‘Since my own son and heir is banished from the dinner-table, I object to an unwashed alien’s taking his place,’ Copley put in. ‘Gervasio will dine with the cook.’

To Gervasio’s infinite relief, he was led off to the kitchen and consigned to the care of François, who later in the evening confided to Pietro that he didn’t believe the boy had ever eaten before. Marcia’s and Sybert’s dinner that night was an erratic affair and quite upset the traditions of the Copley ménage. To Pietro’s scandalization, the two followed him into the kitchen between every course to see how their protégé was progressing.

Gervasio sat perched on a three-legged stool before the long kitchen table, his little bare feet dangling in space, an ample towel about his neck, while an interested scullery-maid plied him with viands. He would have none of the strange dishes that were set before him, but with an expression of settled purpose on his face was steadily eating his way through a bowl of macaroni. It was with a sigh that he had finally to acknowledge himself beaten by the Copley larder. Marcia called Bianca (Marietta’s successor) and bade her give Gervasio a bath and a bed. Bianca had known the boy in his pre-villa days, and, if anything, was more wide-eyed than Pietro on his sudden promotion.

As Marcia was starting upstairs that night, Sybert strolled across the hall toward her and held out his hand.

‘How would it be if we declared an amnesty,’ he inquired—‘at least until Gervasio is fairly started in his career?’

She glanced up in his face a second, surprised, and then shook her head with an air of scepticism. ‘We can try,’ she smiled, ‘but I am afraid we were meant to be enemies.’

Her room was flooded with moonlight; she undressed without lighting her candle, and slipping on a light woollen kimono, sat down on a cushion beside the open window. She was too excited and restless to sleep. She leaned her chin on her hand, with her elbow resting on the low window-sill, and let the cool breeze fan her face.

After a time she heard some one strike a match on the loggia, and her uncle and Sybert came out to the terrace and paced back and forth, talking in low tones. She could hear the rise and fall of their voices, and every now and then the breeze wafted in the smell of their cigars. She grew wider and wider awake, and followed them with her eyes as they passed and repassed in their tireless tramp. At the end of the terrace their voices sank to a low murmur, and then by the loggia they rose again until she could hear broken sentences. Sybert’s voice sounded angry, excited, almost fierce, she thought; her uncle’s, low, decisive, half contemptuous.

Once, as they passed under the window, she heard her uncle say sharply: ‘Don’t be a fool, Sybert. It will make a nasty story if it gets out—and nothing’s gained.’

She did not hear Sybert’s reply, but she saw his angry gesture as he flung away the end of his cigar. The men paused by the farther end of the terrace and stood for several minutes arguing in lowered tones. Then, to Marcia’s amazement, Sybert leaped the low parapet by the ilex grove and struck out across the fields, while her uncle came back across the terrace alone, entered the house, and closed the door. She sat up straight with a quickly beating heart. What was the matter? Could they have quarrelled? Was Sybert going to the station? Surely he would not walk. She leaned out of the window and looked after him, a black speck in the moonlit wheat-field. No, he was going toward Castel Vivalanti. Why Castel Vivalanti at this time of the night? Had it anything to do with Gervasio?—or perhaps Tarquinio, the baker’s son? She recalled her uncle’s words: ‘Don’t be a fool. It will make a nasty story if it gets out.’ Perhaps people’s suspicions against him were true, after all. She thought of his look that night in the train. What was behind it? And then she thought of the picture of him in the carriage with the little boy in his arms. A man who was so kind to children could not be bad at heart. And yet, if he were all that her uncle had thought him, why did he have so many enemies—and so many doubtful friends?

The breeze had grown cold, and she rose with a quick shiver and went to bed. She lay a long time with wide-open eyes watching the muslin curtains sway in the wind. She thought again of Paul Dessart’s words in the warm, sleepy, sunlit cloister; of the little crowd of ragamuffins chasing the dog; of her long, silent ride with Sybert; of the moonlit gateway of Castel Vivalanti, with the dark, high walls towering above. Her thoughts were growing hazy and she was almost asleep when, mingled with a half-waking dream, she heard footsteps cross the terrace and the hall door open softly.