The Wheat Princess

CHAPTER I

It was late and the studio was already well filled when two new-comers were ushered into the room—one a woman still almost young, and still (in a kindly light) beautiful; the other a girl emphatically young, her youth riding triumphant over other qualities which in a few years would become significant. A slight, almost portentous, hush had fallen over the room as they crossed the threshold and shook hands with their host. In a group near the door a young man—it was Laurence Sybert, the first secretary of the American Embassy—broke off in the middle of a sentence with the ejaculation: ‘Ah, the Wheat Princess!’

‘Be careful, Sybert! She will hear you,’ the grey-haired consul-general, who stood at his elbow, warned.

Sybert responded with a laugh and a half-shrug; but his tones, though low, had carried, and the girl flashed upon the group a pair of vivid hazel eyes containing a half-puzzled, half-questioning light, as though she had caught the words but not the meaning. Her vague expression changed to one of recognition; she nodded to the two diplomats as she turned away to welcome a delegation of young lieutenants, brilliant in blue and gold and shining boots.

‘Who is she?’ another member of the group inquired as he adjusted a pair of eye-glasses and turned to scrutinize the American girl—she was American to the most casual observer, from the piquant details of her gown to the masterly fashion in which she handled her four young men.

‘Don’t you know?’ There was just a touch of irony in Sybert’s tone. ‘Miss Marcia Copley, the daughter of the American Wheat King—I fancy you’ve seen his name mentioned in the papers.’

‘Well, well! And so that’s Willard Copley’s daughter?’ He readjusted his glasses and examined her again from this new point of view. ‘She isn’t bad-looking,’ was his comment. ‘The Wheat Princess!’ He repeated the phrase with a laugh. ‘I suppose she has come over to marry an Italian prince and make the title good?’

The originator of the phrase shrugged anew, with the intimation that it was nothing to him who Miss Marcia Copley married.

‘And who is the lady with her?’

It was Melville, the consul-general, who replied.

‘Her aunt, Mrs. Howard Copley. They live in the Palazzo Rosicorelli.’

‘Ah, to be sure! Yes, yes, I know who they are. Her husband’s a reformer or a philanthropist, or something of the sort, isn’t he? I’ve seen him at the meets. I say, you know,’ he added, with an appreciative smile, ‘that’s rather good, the way the two brothers balance each other. Philanthropist and Wheat King!’

An English girl in the group turned and studied the American girl a moment with a critical scrutiny. Marcia Copley’s appearance was daintily attractive. Her hat and gown and furs were a burnished brown exactly the colour of her hair; every little accessory of her dress was unobtrusively fastidious. Her whole bearing, her easy social grace, spoke of a past in which the way had been always smoothed by money. She carried with her a touch of imperiousness, a large air of commanding the world. The English girl noted these things with jealous feminine eyes.

‘Really,’ she said, ‘I don’t see how she has the audacity to face people. I should think that every beggar in the street would be a reproach to her.’

‘There were beggars in Italy long before Willard Copley cornered wheat,’ Melville returned.

‘If what the Tribuna says is true,’ some one ventured, ‘Howard Copley is as much implicated as his brother.’

‘I dare say,’ another laughed; ‘millionaire philanthropists have a way of taking back with the left hand what they have given with the right.’

Sybert had been listening in a half-indifferent fashion to the strictures on the niece, but in response to the implied criticism of the uncle he shook his head emphatically.

‘Howard Copley is no more implicated in the deal than I am,’ he declared. ‘He and his brother have had nothing to do with each other for the last ten years. His philanthropy is honest, and his money is as clean as any fortune can be.’

The statement was not challenged. Sybert was known to be Howard Copley’s friend, and he further carried the reputation of being a warm partizan on the one or two subjects which engaged his enthusiasm—on those which did not engage it he was nonchalant to a degree for a rising diplomat.

The two—Sybert and the consul-general—with a nod to the group presently drifted onward toward the door. The secretary was bent upon departure at the earliest possible opportunity. Teas were a part of the official routine of his life, but by the simple device of coming late and leaving early he escaped as much of their irksomeness as possible. Aside from being secretary of the Embassy, Sybert was a nephew of the ambassador, and it was the latter calling which he found the more onerous burden of the two. His Excellency had formed a troublesome habit of shifting social burdens to the unwilling shoulders of the younger man.

They paused at Mrs. Copley’s elbow with outstretched hands, and were received with a flattering show of cordiality from the aunt, though with but a fleeting nod from the niece; she was, patently, too interested in her officers to have much attention left.

‘Where is your husband?’ Sybert asked.

The lady raised her eyebrows in a picturesque gesture.

‘Beggars,’ she sighed. ‘Something has happened to the beggars again.’ Mr. Copley’s latest philanthropic venture had been the ‘Anti-Begging Society.’ Bread-tickets had been introduced, the beggars were being hunted down and given work, and as a result Copley’s name was cursed from end to end of Rome.

The men smilingly murmured their commiserations.

‘And what are you two diplomats doing here?’ Mrs. Copley asked. ‘I thought that Mr. Dessart invited only artists to his teas.’

Sybert’s gloomy air, as he eyed the door, reflected the question. It was Melville who answered:

‘Oh, we are admirers of art, even if we are not practitioners. Besides, Mr. Dessart and I are old friends. We used to know each other in Pittsburg when he was a boy and I was a good deal younger than I am now.’

His gaze rested for a moment upon their host, who formed one of the hilarious group about Miss Copley. He was an eminently picturesque young fellow, fitted with the usual artist attributes—a velveteen jacket, a flowing necktie, and rather long light-brown hair which constantly got into his eyes, causing him to shake his head impatiently as he talked. He had an open, frank face, humorous blue eyes and the inestimable, eager air of being in love with life.

The conversation showing signs of becoming general, the officers, with visible reluctance, made their bows and gave place to the new-comers. The girl now found time to extend a cordial hand to Melville, while to the secretary she tossed a markedly careless, ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Sybert.’ If Miss Marcia’s offhand manner conveyed something a trifle stronger than indifference, so Sybert’s half-amused smile as he talked to her suggested that her unkindness failed to hurt; that she was too young to count.

‘And what is this I hear about your moving out to a villa for the spring?’ he inquired, turning to Mrs. Copley.

‘Yes, we are thinking of it, but it is not decided yet.’

‘We still have Uncle Howard to deal with,’ added the girl. ‘He was the first one who suggested a villa, but now that exactly the right one presents itself, we very much suspect him of trying to back out.’

‘That will never do, Miss Marcia,’ said Melville. ‘You must hold him to his word.’

‘We are going out to-morrow to inspect it, and if Aunt Katherine and I are pleased–’ She broke off with a graceful gesture which intimated much.

Sybert laughed. ‘Poor Uncle Howard!’ he murmured.

The arrival of fresh guests called their host away, and Mrs. Copley and Melville, turning aside to greet some friends, left Miss Copley for the moment to a tête à tête with Sybert. He maintained his side of the conversation in a half-perfunctory fashion, while the girl allowed a slight touch of hostility to creep beneath her animation.

‘And where is the villa to be, Miss Marcia—at Frascati, I suppose?’

‘Farther away than Frascati; at Castel Vivalanti.’

‘Castel Vivalanti!’

‘Up in the Sabine hills between Palestrina and Tivoli.’

‘Oh, I know where it is; I have a vivid recollection of climbing the hill on a very hot day. I was merely exclaiming at the locality; it’s rather remote, isn’t it?’

‘Its remoteness is the best thing about it. Our object in moving into the hills is to escape from visitors, and if we go no farther than Frascati we shan’t do much escaping.’

This to the family’s most frequent visitor was scarcely a hospitable speech, and a smile of amusement crept to the corners of Sybert’s mouth.

Apparently just becoming aware of the content of her speech, she added with slightly exaggerated sweetness: ‘Of course I don’t mean you, Mr. Sybert. You come so often that I regard you as a member of the household.’

The secretary apparently had it on his tongue to retort, but, thinking better of it, he maintained a discreet silence, while their host approached with the new arrivals—a lady whose name Miss Copley did not catch, but who was presented with the explanatory remark, ‘she writes,’ and several young men who, she judged by their neckties, were artists also. The talk turned on the villa again, and Miss Copley was called upon for a description.

‘I haven’t seen it myself,’ she returned; ‘but from the steward’s account it is the most complete villa in Italy. It has a laurel walk and an ilex grove, balconies, fountains, a marble terrace, a view, and even a ghost.’

‘A ghost?’ queried Dessart. ‘But I thought they were extinct—that the railroads and tourists had driven them all back to the grave.’

‘Not the ghost of the “Bad Prince”; we rent him with the place—and the most picturesque ghost you ever dreamed of! He hoarded his wheat while the peasants were starving, and they murdered him two hundred years ago.’ She repeated the story, mimicking in inimitable fashion the gestures and broken English of Prince Vivalanti’s steward.

A somewhat startled silence hung over the close of the recital, while her auditors glanced at each other in secret amazement. The question uppermost in their minds was whether it was ignorance or mere bravado that had tempted her into repeating just that particular tale. It was a subject which Miss Copley might have been expected to avoid. Laurence Sybert alone was aware that she did not know what a dangerous topic she was venturing on, and he received the performance with an appreciative laugh.

‘A very picturesque story, Miss Copley. The old fellow got what he deserved.’

Marcia Copley assented with a smiling gesture, and the woman who wrote skilfully bridged over a second pause.

‘You were complaining the other day, Mr. Dessart, that the foreigners are making the Italians too modern. Why do you not catch the ghost? He is surely a true antique.’

‘But I am not an impressionist,’ he pleaded.

‘Who is saying anything against impressionists?’ a young man asked in somewhat halting English as he paused beside the group.

‘No one,’ said Dessart; ‘I was merely disclaiming all knowledge of them and their ways. Miss Copley, allow me to present Monsieur Benoit, the last Prix de Rome—he is the man to paint your ghost. He’s an impressionist and paints nothing else.’

‘I suppose you have ghosts enough in the Villa Medici, without having to search for them in the Sabine hills.’

‘Ah, oui, mademoiselle; the Villa Medici has ghosts of many kinds—ghosts of dead hopes and dead ambitions among others.’

‘I should think the ghost of a dead ambition might be too illusive for even an impressionist to catch,’ she returned.

‘Perhaps an impressionist is better acquainted with them than with anything else,’ suggested Dessart, a trifle unkindly.

‘Not when he’s young and a Prix de Rome,’ smiled the woman who wrote.

Mrs. Copley requiring her niece’s presence on the other side of the room, the girl nodded to the group and withdrew. The writer looked after her with an air of puzzled interest.

‘And doesn’t Miss Copley read the papers?’ she inquired mildly.

‘Evidently she does not,’ Sybert rejoined with a laugh as he made his adieus and withdrew.

Half an hour later, Marcia Copley, having made the rounds of the room, again found herself, as tea was being served, in the neighbourhood of her new acquaintance. She dropped down on the divan beside her with a slight feeling of relief at being for the moment out of the current of chatter. Her companion was a vivacious little woman approaching middle age; and though she spoke perfect English, she pronounced her words with a precision which suggested a foreign birth. Her conversation was diverting; it gave evidence of a vast amount of worldly wisdom as well as a wide acquaintance with other people’s affairs. And her range of subjects was wide. She flitted lightly from an artistic estimate of some intaglios of the Augustan age, that had just been dug up outside the Porta Pia, to a comparison of French and Italian dressmakers and a prophecy as to which cardinal would be the next pope.

A portfolio of sketches lay on a little stand beside them, and she presently drew them toward her, with the remark, ‘We will see how our young man has been amusing himself lately!’

There were a half-dozen or so of wash-drawings, and one or two outline sketches of figures in red chalk. None of them was at all finished, but the hasty blocking in showed considerable vigour, and the subjects were at least original. There was no Castle of St. Angelo with a boatman in the foreground, and no Temple of Vesta set off by a line of scarlet seminarists. One of the chalk drawings was of an old chestnut woman crouched over her charcoal fire; another was of the octroi officer under the tall arch of the San Giovanni gate, prodding the contents of a donkey-cart with his steel rod. There were corners of wall shaded by cypresses, bits of architectural adornment, a quick sketch of the lichen-covered elephant’s head spouting water at Villa Madama. They all, slight as they were, possessed a certain distinction, and suggested a very real impression of Roman atmosphere. Marcia examined them with interest.

‘They are extremely good,’ she said as she laid the last one down.

‘Yes,’ her companion agreed; ‘they are so good that they ought to be better—but they never will be.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I know Paul Dessart well enough to know that he will never paint a picture. He has talent, and he’s clever, but he’s at everybody’s service. The workers have no time to be polite. However,’ she finished, ‘it is not for you and me to quarrel with him. If he set to work in earnest he would stop giving teas, and that would be a pity, would it not?’

‘Indeed it would!’ she agreed. ‘How pretty the studio looks this afternoon! I have seen it only by daylight before, and, like all the rest of us, it improves by candle-light.’ Her eyes wandered about the big room, with its furnishings of threadbare tapestry and antique carved chairs. The heavy curtains had been partly drawn over the windows, making a pleasant twilight within. A subtle odour of linseed oil and cigarette smoke, mingled with the fresh scent of violets, pervaded the air.

Paul Dessart, with the Prix de Rome man and a young English sculptor of rising fame, presently joined them; and the talk drifted into Roman politics—a subject concerning which, the artists declared with one accord, they knew nothing and cared less.

‘Oh, I used to get excited over their squabbles,’ said the Englishman; ‘but I soon saw that I should have to choose between that and sculpture; I hadn’t time for both.’

‘I don’t even know who’s premier,’ put in Dessart.

‘A disgraceful lack of interest!’ maintained the American girl. ‘I have only been in Rome two months, and I am an authority on the Triple Alliance and the Abyssinian war; I know what Cavour wanted to do, and what Crispi has done.’

‘That’s not fair, Miss Copley,’ Dessart objected. ‘You’ve been going to functions at the Embassy, and one can absorb politics there through one’s skin. But I warn you, it isn’t a safe subject to get interested in; it becomes a disease, like the opium habit.’

‘He’s not so far from the truth,’ agreed the sculptor. ‘I was talking to a fellow this afternoon, named Sybert, who—perhaps you know him, Miss Copley?’

‘Yes, I know him. What about him?’

‘Oh—er—nothing, in that case.’

‘Pray slander Mr. Sybert if you wish—I’ll promise not to tell. He’s one of my uncle’s friends, not one of mine.’

‘Oh, I wasn’t going to slander him,’ the young man expostulated a trifle sheepishly. ‘The only thing I have against Sybert is the fact that my conversation bores him.’

Marcia laughed with a certain sense of fellow-feeling.

‘Say anything you please,’ she repeated cordially. ‘My conversation bores him too.’

‘Well, what I was going to say is that he has had about all the Roman politics that are good for him. If he doesn’t look out, he’ll be getting in too deep.’

‘Too deep?’ she queried.

It was Dessart who pursued the subject with just a touch of malice. Laurence Sybert, apparently, was not so popular a person as a diplomat should be.

‘He’s lived in Rome a good many years, and people are beginning to wonder what he’s up to. The Embassy does very well for a blind, for he doesn’t take any more interest in it than he does in whether or not Tammany runs New York. All that Sybert knows anything about or cares anything about is Italian politics, and there are some who think that he knows a good sight more about them than he ought. He’s in with the Church party, in with the Government—first friends with the Right, and then with the Left.’

‘Monsieur Sybert is what you call an eclectic,’ suggested Benoit. ‘He chooses the best of each.’

‘I’m not so sure of that,’ Dessart hinted darkly. ‘He’s interested in other factions besides the Vatican and the Quirinal. There are one or two pretty anarchistic societies in Rome, and I’ve heard it whispered–’

‘You don’t mean–’ she asked, with wide-open eyes.

The woman who wrote shook her head, with a laugh. ‘I suspect that Mr. Sybert’s long residence in Rome might be reduced to a simpler formula than that. It was a very wise person who first said, “Cherchez la femme.”’

‘Oh, really?’ said Marcia, with a new note of interest. Laurence Sybert was not a man whom she had ever credited with having emotions, and the suggestion came as a surprise.

‘Rumour says that he still takes a very strong interest in the pretty little Contessa Torrenieri. All I know is that nine or ten years ago, when she was Margarita Carretti, he was openly among her admirers; but she naturally preferred a count—or at least her parents did, which in Italy amounts to the same.’

The girl’s eyes opened still wider; the Contessa Torrenieri was also a frequent guest at the palazzo. But Dessart received the suggestion with a very sceptical smile.

‘And you think that he is only waiting until, in the ripeness of time, old Count Torrenieri goes the way of all counts? I know you are the authority on gossip, madame, but, nevertheless, I doubt very much if that is Laurence Sybert’s trouble.’

‘You don’t really mean that he is an anarchist?’ Marcia demanded.

‘I give him up, Miss Copley.’ The young man shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands in a gesture purely Italian.

‘Are you talking politics?’ asked Mrs. Copley as she joined the group in company with Mr. and Mrs. Melville.

‘Always politics,’ laughed her niece—‘or is it Mr. Sybert now?’

‘They’re practically interchangeable,’ said Dessart.

‘And did I hear you calling him an anarchist, Miss Marcia?’ Melville demanded.

She repudiated the charge with a laugh. ‘I’m afraid Mr. Dessart’s the guilty one.’

‘Here, here! that will never do! Sybert’s a special friend of mine. I can’t allow you to be accusing him of anything like that.’

‘A little applied anarchy wouldn’t be out of place,’ the young man returned. ‘I feel tempted to use some dynamite myself when I see the way this precious government is scattering statues of Victor Emmanuel broadcast through the land.’

‘If you are going to get back into politics,’ said Mrs. Copley, rising, ‘I fear we must leave. I know from experience that it is a long subject.’

The two turned away, escorted to the carriage by Dessart and the Frenchman, while the rest of the group resettled themselves in the empty places. The woman who wrote listened a moment to the badinage and laughter which floated back through the open door; then, ‘Mr. Dessart’s heiress is very attractive,’ she suggested.

‘Why Mr. Dessart’s?’ Melville inquired.

‘Perhaps I was a little premature,’ she conceded—‘though, I venture to prophesy, not incorrect.’

‘My dear lady,’ said Mrs. Melville impressively, ‘you do not know Mrs. Copley. Her niece is more likely to marry an Italian prince than a nameless young artist.’

‘She’s no more likely to marry an Italian prince than she is a South African chief,’ her husband affirmed. ‘Miss Marcia is a young woman who will marry whom she pleases—though,’ he added upon reflection, ‘I am not at all sure it will be Paul Dessart.’

‘She might do worse,’ said his wife. ‘Paul is a nice boy.’

‘Ah—and she might do better. I’ll tell you exactly the man,’ he added, in a burst of enthusiasm, ‘and that is Laurence Sybert.’

The suggestion was met by an amused smile from the ladies and a shrug from the sculptor.

‘My dear James,’ said Mrs. Melville, ‘you may be a very good business man, but you are no match-maker. That is a matter you would best leave to the women. As for your Laurence Sybert, he hasn’t the ghost of a chance—and he doesn’t want it.’

‘I’m doubting he has other fish to fry just now,’ threw out the sculptor.

‘Sybert’s all right,’ said Melville emphatically.

The woman who wrote laughed as she rose. ‘It will be an interesting matter to watch,’ she announced; ‘but you may mark my words that our host is the man.’