Kitabı oku: «The Wheat Princess», sayfa 8

CHAPTER XI

Marcia was awakened the next morning by Bianca knocking at the door, with the information that Gervasio wished to get up, and that, as his clothes were very ragged, she had taken the liberty the night before of throwing them away.

For an instant Marcia blinked uncomprehendingly; then, as the events of the evening flashed through her mind, she sat up in bed, and solicitously clasping her knees in her hands, considered the problem. She felt, and not without reason, that Gervasio’s future success at the villa depended largely on the impression he made at this, his first formal appearance. She finally dispatched Bianca to try him with one of Gerald’s suits, and to be very sure that his face was clean. Meanwhile she hurried through with her own dressing in order to be the first to inspect his rehabilitation.

As she was putting the last touches to her hair she heard a murmur of voices on the terrace, and peering out cautiously, beheld her uncle and Sybert lounging on the parapet engaged with cigarettes. She had not been dreaming, then; those were Sybert’s steps she had heard the night before. She puckered her brow over the puzzle and peered out again. Whatever had happened last night, there was nothing electrical in the air this morning. The two had apparently shoved all inflammable subjects behind them and were merely waiting idly until coffee should be served.

It was a beautifully peaceful spring morning that she looked out upon. The two men on the terrace appeared to be in mood with the day—careless, indifferent loungers, nothing more. And last night? She recalled their low, fierce, angry tones; and the lines in her forehead deepened. This was a chameleon world, she thought. As she stood watching them, Gervasio for the moment forgotten, Gerald ran up to the two with some childish prattle which called forth a quick, amused laugh. Sybert stretched out a lazy hand and drew the boy toward him. Carefully balancing his cigarette on the edge of one of the terra-cotta vases, he rose to his feet and tossed the little fellow in the air four or five times. Gerald screamed with delight and called for more. Sybert laughingly declined, as he resumed his cigarette and his seat on the balustrade.

The little play recalled Marcia to her duty. With a shake of her head at matters in general, she gave them up, and turned her face toward Gervasio’s quarters. Bianca was on her knees before the boy, giving the last touches to his sailor tie, and she turned him slowly around for inspection. His appearance was even more promising than Marcia had hoped for. With his dark curls still damp from their unwonted ablutions, clad in one of Gerald’s baggiest sailor-suits of red linen with a rampant white collar and tie, except for his bare feet (which would not be forced into Gerald’s shoes) he might have been a little princeling himself, backed by a hundred noble ancestors.

Marcia sank down on her knees beside him. ‘You little dear!’ she exclaimed as she kissed him.

Gervasio was not used to caresses, and for a moment he drew back, his brown eyes growing wide with wonder. Then a smile broke over his face, and he reached out a timid hand and patted her confidingly on the cheek. She kissed him again in pure delight, and taking him by the hand, set out forthwith for the loggia.

‘Ecco! my friends. Isn’t he beautiful?’ she demanded.

Mr. Copley and Sybert sprang to their feet and came forward interestedly.

‘Who denies now that it’s clothes that make the man?’

‘I can’t say but that he was as picturesque last night,’ her uncle returned; ‘but he’s undoubtedly cleaner this morning.’

‘Where’s Gerald?’ asked Sybert. ‘Let’s see what he has to say of the new arrival.’

Gerald, who had but just discovered Marcellus, was delightedly romping in the garden with him, and was dragged away under protest and confronted with the stranger. He examined him in silence a moment and then remarked, ‘He’s got my cloves on.’ And suddenly, as a terrible idea dawned upon him, he burst out: ‘Is he a new bruvver? ‘Cause if he is you can take him away.’

‘Oh, my dear!’ his mother remonstrated in horror. ‘He’s a little Italian boy.’

Gerald was visibly relieved. He examined Gervasio again from this new point of view.

‘I want to go wifout my shoes and socks,’ he declared.

‘Oh, but he’s going to wear shoes and socks, too, as soon we can get some to fit him,’ said Marcia.

‘Do you want to see my lizhyards?’ Gerald asked insinuatingly, suddenly making up his mind and pulling Gervasio by the sleeve.

Gervasio backed away.

‘You must talk to him in Italian, Gerald,’ Sybert suggested. ‘He’s like Marietta: he doesn’t understand anything else. I should like to have another look at those lizards myself,’ he added. ‘Come on, Gervasio,’ and taking a boy by each hand, he strode off toward the fountain.

Mrs Copley looked after them dubiously, but Marcia interposed, ‘He’s a dear little fellow, Aunt Katherine, and it will be good for Gerald to have some one to play with.’

‘Marcia’s right, Katherine; it won’t hurt him any, and I doubt if the boy’s Italian is much worse than Bianca’s.’

Thus Gervasio’s formal installation at the villa. For the first week or so his principal activity was eating, until he was in the way of becoming as rosy-cheeked as Gerald himself. During the early stages of his career he was consigned to the kitchen, where François served him with soup and macaroni to the point of bursting. Later, having learned to wield a knife and fork without disaster, he was advanced to the nursery, where he supped with Gerald under the watchful eye of Granton.

Taken all in all, Gervasio proved a valuable addition to the household. He was sweet-tempered, eager to please, and pitifully grateful for the slightest kindness. He became Gerald’s faithful henchman and implicitly obeyed his commands, with only an occasional rebellion when they were over-oppressive. He was quick to learn, and it was not long before he was jabbering in a mixture of Italian and English with a vocabulary nearly as varied as Gerald’s own.

The first week following Gervasio’s advent was a period of comparative quiet at the villa, but one fairly disturbing little contretemps occurred to break the monotony.

The boy had been promised a reward of sweet chocolate as soon as he should learn to wear shoes and stockings with a smiling face—shoes and stockings being, in his eyes, an objectionable feature of civilization. When it came time for payment, however, Marcia discovered that there was no sweet chocolate in the house, and, not to disappoint him, she ordered Gerald’s pony-carriage, and taking with her the two boys and a groom, set out for Castel Vivalanti and the baker’s. Had she stopped to think, she would have known that to take Gervasio to Castel Vivalanti in broad daylight was not a wise proceeding. But it was a frequent characteristic of the Copleys that they did their thinking afterward. The spectacle of Gervasio Delano in a carriage with the principino, and in new clothes, with his face washed, very nearly occasioned a mob among his former playmates. The carriage was besieged, and Marcia found it necessary to distribute a considerable largess of copper before she could rid herself of her following.

As she laughingly escaped from the crowd and drove out through the gateway a man stepped forward from the corner of the wall and motioned her to stop. For a moment a remembrance of her aunt’s rencontre with the Camorrist flashed through her mind, and then she smiled as she reflected that it was broad daylight and in full sight of the town. She pulled the pony to a standstill and asked him what he wanted. He was Gervasio’s stepfather, he said. They were poor, hard-working people and did not have enough to eat, but they were very lonely without the boy and wished to have him back. Even American princes, he added, couldn’t take poor people’s children away without their permission. And he finished by insinuating that if he were paid enough he might reconsider the matter.

Marcia did not understand all that he said, but as Gervasio began to cry, and at the same time clasped both hands firmly about the seat in an evident determination to resist all efforts to dislodge him, she saw what he meant, and replied that she would tell the police. But the man evidently thought that he had the upper hand of the situation, and that she would rather buy him off than let the boy go. With a threatening air, he reached out and grasped Gervasio roughly by the arm. Gervasio screamed, and Marcia, before she thought of possible consequences, struck the man a sharp blow with the whip and at the same time lashed the pony into a gallop. They dashed down the stony road and around the corners at a perilous rate, while the man shouted curses from the top of the hill.

They reached the villa still bubbling with excitement over the adventure, and caused Mrs. Copley no little alarm. But when Marcia greeted her uncle’s arrival that night with the story, he declared that she had done just right; and without waiting for dinner, he remounted his horse, and galloping back to Castel Vivalanti, rode straight up to the door of the little trattoria, where the fellow was engaged in drinking wine and cursing Americans. There he told him, before an interested group of witnesses, that Gervasio was not his child; that since he could not treat him decently he had forfeited all claim to him; and that if he tried to levy any further blackmail he would find himself in prison. Wherewith he wheeled his horse’s head about and made a spectacular exit from the town. If anything were needed to strengthen Gervasio’s position with Mr. Copley, this incident answered the purpose.

As a result of the adventure, Marcia, for the time, dropped Castel Vivalanti from her calling-list and extended her acquaintance in the other direction. She came to be well known as she galloped about the country-side on a satin-coated little sorrel (born and bred in Kentucky), followed by a groom on a thumping cob, who always respectfully drew up behind her when she stopped. As often as she could think of any excuse, she visited the peasants in their houses, laughing gaily with them over her own queer grammar. It was an amused curiosity which at first actuated her friendliness. Their ingenious comments and naïve questions in regard to America proved an ever-diverting source of interest; but after a little, as she understood them better, she grew to like them for their own stanch virtues. When she looked about their gloomy little rooms, with almost no furnishing except a few copper pots and kettles and a tawdry picture of the Madonna, and saw what meagre, straitened lives they led, and yet how bravely they bore them, her amusement changed to respect. Their quick sympathy and warm friendliness awakened an answering spark, and it was not long before she had discovered for herself the lovable charm of the Italian peasant.

She explored, in the course of her rides, many a forgotten little mountain village topping a barren crag of the Sabines, and held by some Roman prince in almost the same feudal tenure as a thousand years ago. They were picturesque enough from below, these huddling grey-stone hamlets shooting up from the solid rock; but when she had climbed the steeply winding path and had looked within, she found them miserable and desolate beyond belief. She was coming to see the under side of a great deal of picturesqueness.

Meanwhile, though life was moving in an even groove at Villa Vivalanti, the same could not be said of the rest of Italy. Each day brought fresh reports of rioting throughout the southern provinces, and travellers hurrying north reported that every town of any size was under martial law. In spite of reassuring newspaper articles, written under the eye of the police, it was evident that affairs were fast approaching a crisis. There was not much anxiety felt in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome, for the capital was too great a stronghold of the army to be in actual danger from mobs. The affair, if anything, was regarded as a welcome diversion from the tediousness of Lent, and the embassies and large hotels where the foreigners congregated were animated by a not unpleasurable air of excitement.

Conflicting opinions of every sort were current. Some shook their heads wisely, and said that in their opinion the matter was much more serious than appeared on the surface. They should not be surprised to see the scenes of the French Commune enacted over again; and they intimated further, that since it had to happen, they were very willing to be on hand in time to see the fun.

Many expressed the belief that the trouble had nothing to do with the price of bread; the wheat famine was merely a pretext for stirring up the people. It was well known that the universities, the younger generation of writers and newspaper men, even the ranks of the army, were riddled with socialism. What more likely than that the socialists and the church adherents had united to overthrow the government, intending as soon as their end was accomplished to turn upon each other and fight it out for supremacy? It was the opinion of these that the government should have adopted the most drastic measures possible, and was doing very foolishly in catering to the populace by putting down the dazio. Still others held that the government should have abolished the dazio long before, and that the people in the south did very well to rise and demand their rights. And so the affairs of the unfortunate Neapolitans were the subject of conversation at every table d’hôte in Rome; and the forestieri sojourning within the walls derived a large amount of entertainment from the matter.

Marcia Copley, however, had heard little of the gathering trouble. She did not read the papers, and her uncle did not mention the matter at home. He was too sick at heart to dwell on it uselessly, and it was not a subject he cared to discuss with his niece. His family, indeed, saw very little of him, for he had thrown himself into the work of the Foreign Relief Committee with characteristic energy, and he spent the most of his time in Rome. Marcia’s interest in sight-seeing had come to a sudden halt since the afternoon of Tre Fontane. She had ventured into the city only once, and then merely to attend to the purchase of clothes for Gervasio. The Roystons, on that occasion, had been out when she called at their hotel, and her feeling of regret was mingled largely with relief as she left her card and retired in safety to Villa Vivalanti.

She had not analysed her emotions very thoroughly, but she felt a decided trepidation at the thought of seeing Paul. The trepidation, however, was not altogether an unpleasant sensation. The scene in the cloisters had returned to her mind many times, and she had taken several brief excursions into the future. What would he say the next time they met? Would he renew the same subject, or would he tacitly overlook that afternoon, and for the time let everything be as it had been before? She hoped that the latter would be the case. It would give a certain piquancy to their relations, and she was not ready—just at present—to make up her mind.

Paul, on his side, had also pondered the question somewhat. Events were not moving with the rapidity he wished. Marcia, evidently, would not come into Rome, and he could think of no valid excuse for going out to the villa. His pessimistic forecast of events had proved true. Holy Week found the Roystons still in the city, treating themselves to orgies of church-going. As he followed his aunt from church to church (there are in the neighbourhood of three hundred and seventy-five in Rome, and he says they visited them all that week) he indulged in many speculations as to the state of Marcia’s mind in regard to himself. At times he feared he had been over-precipitate; at others, that he had not been precipitate enough.

His aunt and cousins returned from a flying visit to the villa, with the report that Marcia had adopted a boy and a dog and was solicitously engaged with their education. ‘What did she say about me, Madge?’ Paul boldly inquired.

‘She said you were a very impudent fellow,’ Margaret retorted; and in response to his somewhat startled expression she added more magnanimously: ‘You needn’t be so vain as to think she said anything about you. She never even mentioned your name.’

Paul breathed a meditative ‘Ah!’ Marcia had not mentioned his name. It was not such a bad sign, that: she was thinking about him, then. If there were no other man—and he was vain enough to take her at her word—nothing could be better for his cause than a solitary week in the Sabine hills. He knew from present—and past—experience that an Italian spring is a powerful stimulant for the heart.

On Tuesday of Holy Week Mrs. Royston wakened slightly from her spiritual trance to observe that she had scarcely seen Marcia for as much as a week, and that as soon as Lent was over they must have the Copleys in to luncheon at the hotel.

‘Where’s the use of waiting till Lent’s over?’ Paul had inquired. ‘You needn’t make it a function. Just a sort of—family affair. If you invite them for Thursday, we can all go together to the tenebræ service at St. Peter’s. As this is Miss Copley’s first Easter in Rome, she might be interested.’

Accordingly a note arrived at the villa on Wednesday morning inviting the family—Gerald included—to breakfast the next day with the Roystons in Rome. On Thursday morning an acceptance—Gerald excluded—arrived at the Hôtel de Lourdres et Paris, and was followed an hour later by the Copleys themselves.

The breakfast went off gaily. Paul was his most expansive self, and the whole table responded to his mood. It was with a sense of gratification that Marcia saw her uncle, who had lately been so grave, laughingly exchanging nonsense with the young man. She felt, though she would scarcely have acknowledged it to herself, a certain property right in Paul, and it pleased her subtly when he pleased other people. She sat next to him at the table, and occasionally, beneath his laughter and persiflage, she caught an undertone of meaning. So long as they were not alone and he could not go beyond a certain point, she found their relations on a distinctly satisfying basis.

In spite of Paul’s manœuvres, he did not find himself alone with Marcia that afternoon. There was always a cousin in attendance. Mr. and Mrs. Copley, declining the spectacle of the tenebræ in St. Peter’s—they had seen it before—left shortly after luncheon. As they were leaving, Mr. Copley remarked to Mrs. Royston—

‘I will entrust my niece to your care, and please do not lose sight of her until you put her in my hands for the evening train. I wish no more such escapades as we had the other day.’ And, to Marcia’s discomfort, the adventures involving the rescue of Marcellus and Gervasio were recounted in detail. For an unexplained reason, she would have preferred the story of their origin to remain in darkness.

Paul’s face clouded slightly. ‘My objections to Sybert grow rapidly,’ he remarked in an undertone.

Marcia laughed. ‘If you could have seen him! He never spoke a word to me all the way out in the train. He sat with his arms folded and a frown on his brow, like—Napoleon at Moscow.’

Paul’s face brightened again. ‘Oh, I begin to like him, after all,’ he declared.

Toward five o’clock that evening every carriage in the city seemed to be bent for the Ponte Sant’ Angelo. A casual spectator would never have chosen a religious function as the end of all this confusion. In the tangle of narrow streets beyond the bridge the way was almost blocked, and such progress as was possible was made at a snail’s pace. The Royston party, in two carriages, not unnaturally lost each other. The carriage containing Marcia, Margaret, and Paul, getting into the jam in the narrow Borgo Nuovo, arrived in the piazza of St. Peter’s with wheels locked with a cardinal’s coach. The cardinal’s coachman and theirs exchanged an unclerical opinion of each other’s ability as drivers. The cardinal advanced his head from the window with a mildly startled air of reproof, and the Americans laughed gaily at the situation. After a moment of scrutiny the cardinal smiled back, and the four disembarked and set out on foot across the piazza, leaving the men to sever the difficulty at their leisure. He proved an unexpectedly cordial person, and when they parted on the broad steps he held out of his hand with a friendly smile and after a moment of perplexed hesitation the three gravely shook it in turn.

‘Do you think we ought to have kissed it?’ Marcia inquired. ‘I would have done it, only I didn’t know how.’

Paul laughed. ‘He knew we weren’t of the true faith. No right-minded Catholic would laugh at nearly spilling a cardinal in the street.’

They stood aside by the central door looking for Mrs. Royston and Eleanor and watching the crowd surge past. Paul was quite insistent that they should go in without the others, but Marcia was equally insistent that they wait. She had an intuitive feeling that there was safety in numbers.

For a wonder they presently espied Mrs. Royston bearing down upon them, a small camp-stool clutched to her portly bosom, and Eleanor panting along behind, a camp-stool in either hand.

Mrs. Royston caught sight of them with an expression of relief.

‘My dears, I was afraid I had lost you,’ she gasped. ‘We remembered, just as we got to the bridge, that we hadn’t brought any chairs, and so we went back for them. Paul, you should have thought of them yourself. I suppose we’d better hurry in and get a good place.’

Paul patiently possessed himself of the chairs and followed the ladies, with a glance at Marcia which seemed to say, ‘Is there this day living a more exemplary nephew and gentleman than I?’

The tenebræ service on Holy Thursday is the one time in the year when St. Peter’s may be seen at night. The great church looms vaster and emptier and more solemn then than at any other time. The eye cannot penetrate to the distant dome hidden in shadows. The long nave stretches interminably into space, the chapels deepen and broaden until they are churches themselves. The clustered pillars reach upward till they are lost in the darkness. What the eye cannot grasp the imagination seizes upon, and the vast interior grows and widens until it seems to stretch out arms to inclose all Christendom itself. On this one night it does inclose all Rome—nobility and peasants, Italians and foreigners: those who are of the faith, and those who are merely spectators; those who come to worship; those who come to be amused—St. Peter’s receives them all with the same impartiality.

Standing outside, it had seemed to them that the whole city had flowed through the doors; but within, the church was still approximately empty. As they walked down the broad nave in the dimness of twilight, Marcia turned to the young man beside her.

‘At first I didn’t think St. Peter’s was impressive—that is, compared to Milan and Cologne and some of the other cathedrals—but it’s like the rest of Rome, it grows and grows until–’

‘It comes to be the whole world,’ he supplied.

By the bronze baldacchino Mrs. Royston spread her camp-stools and sat down.

‘This is the best place we could choose,’ she said contentedly as she folded her hands. ‘We shan’t be very near the choir, but we can hear just as well, and we shall have an excellent view of the altar-washing and the sacred relics.’ She spoke in the tone of one who is picking out a stall for a theatrical performance.

From time to time friends of either the Roystons or Marcia drifted up and, having paused to chat a few minutes, passed on, giving place to others. As one group left them with smiles and friendly bows, Marcia turned to Paul, who was standing beside her.

‘It’s really dreadful,’ she said, ‘the way the foreigners take possession of Rome. This might as well be a reception at the Embassy. If I were the pope, I would put up a sign on the door of St. Peter’s saying, “No forestieri admitted.”’

‘Ah, but there are no forestieri in the case of St. Peter’s; it belongs to all nations.’

Marcia smiled at the young man and turned away; and as she turned she caught, across an intervening stream of heads, a face, looking in her direction, wearing about the eyes a curiously quizzical expression. It was the face of a middle-aged woman—an interesting face—not exactly beautiful, but sparkling with intelligence. It seemed very familiar to Marcia, and as her eyes lingered on it a moment the quizzical expression gave place to one of amused friendliness. The woman smiled and bowed and passed on. Marcia bowed vaguely, and then it flashed through her mind who it was—the lady who wrote, the ‘greatest gossip in Rome,’ whom she had met at the studio tea so many weeks before. She had forgotten all about her unknown friend of that day, and now she turned quickly to Paul to ask her identity. Paul was engaged in answering some question of his aunt’s, and before she could gain his attention again a hush swept over the great interior and everything else was forgotten in the opening chorus of the ‘Miserere.’

The twilight had deepened, and the great white dome shone dimly far above the blackness of the crowd. The voices of the papal choir swelled louder and louder in the solemn chant, and high and separate and alone rose the clear, flute-like treble of the ‘Pope’s Nightingale.’ And as an undertone, an accompaniment to the music, the shuffle and murmur of thirty thousand listeners rose and fell like the distant beat of surf.

The candles on the altar showed dimly above their heads. As the service continued, one by one the lights were extinguished. After half an hour or so, the waiting and intensity grew wearing. The crowd was pressing closer, and Margaret Royston craned her neck, vainly trying to discover how many candles remained. Paul, with ready imagination, was answering his aunt’s questions as to the meaning of the ceremonies. Margaret turned to Marcia.

‘Poke this young priest in front of me,’ she whispered, and ask him in Italian how many candles are left.’

The young priest, overhearing the words, turned around with an amused smile, obligingly stood on his tiptoes to look at the altar, and replied in English that there were three.

‘Thank you,’ said Margaret; ‘I didn’t suppose you could talk English.’

‘I was born in Troy, New York.’

‘Really?’ she laughed, and the two fell to comparing the rival merits of the Hudson and the Tiber.

He proved most friendly, carefully explaining to the party the significance of the service and the meaning of the different symbols. Mrs. Royston looked reproachfully at her nephew, whose stories, it transpired, did not accord with fact.

‘You really couldn’t expect me to know as much as a professional, Aunt Eleanor,’ he unblushingly expostulated. My explanations were more picturesque than his, at any rate; and if they aren’t true, they ought to be.’

The last candle was finally out, and for a moment the great interior remained in darkness. Then a noise like the distant rattle of thunder symbolized the rending of the veil, and in an instant lights sprang out from every arch and pier and dome. A long procession of cardinals, choristers, and acolytes wound singing to the high altar—the ‘Altar of the World.’

Marcia stood by the railing and watched their faces as they filed past. They were such thoughtful, spiritual, kindly faces that her respect for this great power—the greatest power in Christendom—increased momentarily. She felt a sort of shame to be there merely as a spectator. She looked about at the faces of the peasants, and thought what a barren, barren existence would be theirs without this church, which promised the only joy they could ever hope to have.

When the ceremony of washing the altar with oil and wine was ended, the young priest bade them a friendly good evening. He could not wait for the holy relics, he said; they had supper at the monastery at seven o’clock. He hastily added, however, in response to the smile trembling on Margaret’s lips, ‘Not that they are not the true relics and very holy, but I have seen them several times before.’

The relics were exhibited to the multitude from St. Veronica’s balcony far above their heads. Paul whispered to Marcia with a little laugh:

‘Our friend the cardinal would be gratified, would he not, to see his heretics bowing before St. Veronica’s handkerchief? Look,’ he added, ‘at that peasant woman in her blue skirt and scarlet kerchief. She has probably walked fifty miles, with her baby strapped to a board. I suppose she thinks the child will have good fortune the rest of his life If he just catches a glimpse of a splinter of the true cross.’

Marcia looked at the woman standing beside her, a pilgrim from the Abruzzi, judging from her dress. She was raising an illumined face to the little balcony where the priest was holding above their heads the holy relic. In her arms she held a baby whose face she was turning upward also, while she murmured prayers in his ears. Marcia’s glance wandered away over the crowd—the poor pilgrim peasants whose upturned faces, worn by work and poverty, were softened for the moment into a holy awe. Then she raised her eyes to the balcony where the priest in his white robes was holding high above his head the shining silver cross in which was incased St. Peter’s dearest relic, the tiny splinter of the true cross. The light was centred on the little balcony; every eye in the great concourse was fixed upon it. The priest was fat, his face was red, his attitude theatrical. The whole spectacle was theatrical. A quick revulsion of feeling passed over her. A few moments before, as she watched the procession of cardinals, she had been ready to admit the spiritual significance of the scene; now she saw only its spectacular side. It was merely a play, a delusion got up to dazzle the poor peasants. This church was the only thing they had in life, and, after all, what did it do for them? What could St. Veronica’s handkerchief, what could a splinter of the true cross, do to brighten their lives? It was superstition, not religion, that was being offered to the peasants of Italy.