The Wheat Princess

CHAPTER V

Meanwhile, the unconscious subjects of Castel Vivalanti’s ‘apoplexies’ were gaily installing themselves in their new, old dwelling. The happy hum of life had again invaded the house, and its walls once more echoed to the ring of a child’s laughter. They were very matter-of-fact people—these Americans, and they took possession of the ancestral home of the Vivalanti as if it were as much their right as a seaside cottage at Newport. Upstairs Granton and Marietta were unpacking trunks and hampers and laying Paris gowns in antique Roman clothes-chests; in the villa kitchen François was rattling copper pots and kettles, and anxiously trying to adapt his modern French ideas to a mediaeval Roman stove; while from every room in succession sounded the patter of Gerald’s feet and his delighted squeals over each new discovery.

For the past two weeks Roman workmen and Castel Vivalanti cleaning-women had been busily carrying out Mrs. Copley’s orders. The florid furniture and coloured chandeliers of the latter Vivalanti had been banished to the attic (or what answers to an attic in a Roman villa), while the faded damask of a former generation had been dusted and restored. Tapestries covered the walls and hung over the balustrade of the marble staircase. Dark rugs lay on the red tile floors; carved chests and antique chairs and tables of coloured marble, supported by gilded griffins, were scattered through the rooms. In the bedrooms the heavy draperies had been superseded by curtains of an airier texture, while wicker chairs and chintz-covered couches lent an un-Roman air of comfort to the rooms.

In spite of his humorous grumbling about the trials of moving-day, Mr. Copley found himself very comfortable as he lounged on the parapet toward sunset, smoking a pre-prandial cigarette, and watching the shadows as they fell over the Campagna. Gerald was already up to his elbows in the fountain, and the ilex grove was echoing his happy shrieks as he prattled in Italian to Marietta about a marvellous two-tailed lizard he had caught in a cranny of the stones. Copley smiled as he listened, for—Castel Vivalanti to the contrary—his little boy was very near his heart.

Marcia in the house had been gaily superintending the unpacking, and running back and forth between the rooms, as excited by her new surroundings as Gerald himself.

‘What time does Villa Vivalanti dine?’ she inquired while on a flying visit to her aunt’s room.

‘Eight o’clock when any of us are in town, and half-past seven other nights.’

‘I suppose it’s half-past seven to-night, alors! Shall I make a grande toilette in honour of the occasion?’

‘Put on something warm, whatever else you do; I distrust this climate after sundown.’

‘You’re such a distrustful person, Aunt Katherine! I can’t understand how one can have the heart to accuse this innocent old villa of harbouring malaria.’

She returned to her own room and delightedly rummaged out a dinner-gown from the ancient wardrobe, with a little laugh at the thought of the many different styles it had held in its day. Perhaps some other girl had once occupied this room; very likely a young Princess Vivalanti, two hundred years before, had hung silk-embroidered gowns in this very wardrobe. It was a big, rather bare, delightfully Italian apartment with tall windows having solid barred shutters overlooking the terrace. The view from the windows revealed a broad expanse of Campagna and hills. Marcia dressed with her eyes on the landscape, and then stood a long time gazing up at the broken ridges of the Sabines, glowing softly in the afternoon light. Picturesque little mountain hamlets of battered grey stone were visible here and there clinging to the heights; and in the distance the walls and towers of a half-ruined monastery stood out clear against the sky. She drew a deep breath of pleasure. To be an artist, and to appreciate and reproduce this beauty, suddenly struck her as an ideal life. She smiled at herself as she recalled something she had said to Paul Dessart in the gallery the day before; she had advised him—an artist—to exchange Italy for Pittsburg!

Mr. Copley, who was strolling on the terrace, glanced up, and catching sight of his niece, paused beneath her balcony while he quoted:—

Marcia brought her eyes from the distant landscape to a contemplation of her uncle; and then she stepped through the glass doors, and leaned over the balcony railing with a little laugh.

‘You make a pretty poor Romeo, Uncle Howard,’ she called down. ‘I’m afraid the real one never wore a dinner-jacket nor smoked a cigarette.’

Mr. Copley spread out his hands in protest.

‘For the matter of that, I doubt if Juliet ever wore a gown from—where was it—42, Avenue de l’Opéra? How does the new house go?’ he asked.

‘Beautifully. I feel like a princess on a balcony waiting for the hunters to come back from the chase.’

‘I can’t get over the idea that I’m a usurper myself, and that the rightful lord is languishing in a donjon somewhere in the cellar. Come down and talk to me. I’m getting lonely so far from the world.’

Marcia disappeared from the balcony and reappeared three minutes later on the loggia. She paused on the top step and slowly turned around in order to take in the whole affect. The loggia, in its rehabilitation, made an excellent lounging-place for a lazy summer morning. It was furnished with comfortably deep Oriental rush chairs, a crimson rug and awnings, and, at either side of the steps, white azaleas growing in marble cinerary urns.

‘Isn’t this the most fun you ever had, Uncle Howard?’ she inquired as she brought her eyes back to Mr. Copley waiting on the terrace below. ‘We’ll have coffee served out here in the morning, and then when it gets sunny in the afternoon we’ll move to the end of the terrace under the ilex trees. Villa Vivalanti is the most thoroughly satisfying place I ever lived in.’ She ran down the steps and joined him. ‘Aren’t those little trees nice?’ she asked, nodding toward a row of oleanders ranged at mathematical intervals along the balustrade. ‘I think that Aunt Katherine and I planned things beautifully!’

‘If every one were as well pleased with his own work as you appear to be, this would be a contented world. There’s nothing like the beautiful enthusiasm of youth.’

‘It’s a very good thing to have, just the same,’ said Marcia, good-naturedly; ‘and without mentioning any names, I know one man who would be less disagreeable if he had more of it.’

‘None of that!’ said her uncle. ‘Our pact was that if I stopped grumbling about the villa being so abominably far from Rome, you were not to utter any—er–’

‘Unpleasant truths about Mr. Sybert? Very well, I’ll not mention him again; and you’ll please not refer to the thirty-nine kilometres—it’s a bargain. Gerald, I judge, has found the fountain,’ she added as a delighted shriek issued from the grove.

‘And a menagerie as well.’

‘If he will only keep them out of doors! I shall dream of finding lizards in my bed.’

‘If you only dream of them you will be doing well. I dare say the place is full of bats and lizards and owls and all manner of ruin-haunting creatures.’

‘You’re such a pessimist, Uncle Howard. Between you and Aunt Katherine, the poor villa won’t have a shred of character left. For my part, I approve of it all—particularly the ruins. I am dying to explore them—do you think it’s too late to-night?’

‘Far too late; you’d get malaria, to say nothing of missing dinner. Here comes Pietro now to announce the event.’

As the family entered the dining-room they involuntarily paused on the threshold, struck by the contrast between the new and the old. In the days of Cardinal Vivalanti the room had been the chapel, and it still contained its Gothic ceiling, appropriately redecorated to its new uses with grape-wreathed trellises, and, in the central panelling, Bacchus crowned with vines. The very modern dinner-table, with its glass and silver and shaded candles, looked ludicrously out of place in the long, dusky, vaulted apartment, which, in spite of its rakish frescoes, tenaciously preserved the air of a chapel. The glass doors at the end were thrown wide to a little balcony which overlooked the garden and the ilex grove; and the room was flooded with a nightingale’s song.

Marcia clasped her hands ecstatically.

‘Isn’t this perfect? Aren’t you glad we came, Aunt Katherine? I feel like forgiving all my enemies! Uncle Howard, I’m going to be lovely to Mr. Sybert.’

‘Don’t promise anything rash,’ he laughed. ‘You’ll get acclimated in a day or two.’

Gerald, in honour of the occasion, and because Marietta, under the stress of excitement, had forgotten to give him his supper, was allowed to dine en famille. Elated by the unwonted privilege and by his new surroundings, he babbled gaily of the ride in the cars and the little boys who turned ‘summelsorts’ by the roadside, and of the beautiful two-tailed lizard of the fountain, whose charms he dwelt on lovingly. But he had missed his noonday nap, and though he struggled bravely through the first three courses, his head nodded over the chicken and salad, and he was led away by Marietta still sleepily boasting, in a blend of English and Italian, of the bellissimi animali he would catch domane morning in the fountain.

‘It is a pity,’ said Marcia, as the sound of his prattle died away, ‘Gerald hasn’t some one his own age to play with.’

‘Yes, it is a pity,’ Copley returned. ‘I passed a lonely childhood myself, and I know how barren it is.’

‘That is the chief reason that would make me want to go back to New York,’ said his wife.

Her husband smiled. ‘I suppose there are children to be found outside of New York?’

‘There are the Kirkups in Rome,’ she agreed; ‘but they are so boisterous; and they always quarrel with Gerald whenever they come to play with him.’

‘I am not sure, myself, but that Gerald quarrels with them,’ returned her husband. However fond he might be of his offspring, he cherished no motherly delusions. ‘But perhaps you are right,’ he added, with something of a sigh. ‘It may be necessary to take him back to America before long. I myself have doubts if this cosmopolitan atmosphere it the best in which to bring up a boy.’

‘I should have wished him to spend a winter in Paris for his French,’ said Mrs. Copley, plaintively; ‘but I dare say he can learn it later. Marcia didn’t begin till she was twelve, and she has a very good accent, I am sure.’

Mr. Copley twisted the handle of his glass in silence.

‘I suppose, after all,’ he said finally, to no one in particular, ‘if you manage to bring up a boy to be a decent citizen you’ve done something in the world.’

‘I don’t know,’ Marcia objected, with a half-laugh. ‘If one man, whom we will suppose is a decent citizen, brings up one boy to be a decent citizen, and does nothing else, I don’t see that much is gained to the world. Your one man has merely shifted the responsibility.’

Mr. Copley shrugged a trifle. ‘Perhaps the boy might be better able to bear it.’

‘Of course it would be easier for the man to think so,’ she agreed. ‘But if everybody passed on his responsibilities there wouldn’t be much progress. The boys might do the same, you know, when they grew up.’

Mrs. Copley rose, ‘If you two are going to talk metaphysics, I shall go into the salon and have coffee alone.’

‘It’s not metaphysics; it’s theology,’ her husband returned. ‘Marcia is developing into a terrible preacher.’

‘I know it,’ Marcia acknowledged. ‘I’m growing deplorably moral; I think it must be the Roman air.’

‘It doesn’t affect most people that way,’ her uncle laughed. ‘I don’t care for any coffee, Katherine. I will smoke a cigarette on the terrace and wait for you out there.’

He disappeared through the balcony doors, and Marcia and her aunt proceeded to the salon.

Marcia poured the coffee, and her aunt said as she received her cup, ‘I really believe your uncle is getting tired of Rome and will be ready to go back before long.’

‘I don’t believe he’s tired of Rome, Aunt Katherine. I think he’s just a little bit—well, discouraged.’

‘Nonsense, child! he has nothing to be discouraged about; he is simply getting restless again. I know the signs! I’ve never known him to stay as long as this in one place before. I only hope now that he will not think of any ridiculous new thing to do, but will be satisfied to go back to New York and settle down quietly like other people.’

‘It seems to me,’ said Marcia, slowly, ‘as if he might do more good there, because he would understand better what the people need. There are plenty of things to be done even in New York.’

‘Oh, yes; when he once got settled he would find any amount of things to take up his time. He might even try yachting, for a change; I am sure that keeps men absorbed.’

Marcia sipped her coffee in silence and glanced out of the window at her uncle, who was pacing up and down the terrace with his hands in his pockets. He looked a rather lonely figure in the half-darkness. It suddenly struck her, as she watched him, that she did not understand him; she had scarcely realized before that there was anything to understand.

Mrs. Copley set her cup down on the table, and Marcia rose. ‘Let’s go out on the terrace, Aunt Katherine.’

‘You go out, my dear, and I will join you later. I want to see if Gerald is asleep. I neglected to have a crib sent out for him, and the dear child thrashes around so—what with a bed four feet high and a stone floor–’

‘It would be disastrous!’ Marcia agreed.

She crossed the loggia to the terrace and silently fell into step beside her uncle. It was almost dark, and a crescent moon was hanging low over the top of Guadagnolo. A faint lemon light still tinged the west, throwing into misty relief the outline of the Alban hills. The ilex grove was black—gruesomely black—and the happy song of the nightingales and the splashing of the fountain sounded uncanny coming from the darkness; but the white, irregular mass of the villa formed a cheerful contrast, with its shining lights, which threw squares of brightness on the marble terrace and the trees.

Marcia looked about with a deep breath. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Uncle Howard?’ They paused a moment by the parapet and stood looking down over the plain. ‘Isn’t the Campagna lovely,’ she added, ‘half covered with mist?’

‘Yes, it’s lovely—and the mist means death to the peasants who live beneath it.’

She exclaimed half impatiently:

‘Uncle Howard, why can’t you let anything be beautiful here without spoiling it by pointing out an ugliness beneath?’

‘I’m sorry; it isn’t my fault that the ugliness exists. Look upon the mist as a blessed dew from heaven, if it makes you any happier.’

‘Of course I should rather know the truth, but it seems as if the Italians are happy in spite of things. They strike me as the happiest people I have ever seen.’

‘Ah, well, perhaps they are happier than we think.’

‘I’m sure they are,’ said Marcia, comfortably. ‘Anglo-Saxons, particularly New Englanders, and most particularly Mr. Howard Copley, worry too much.’

‘It’s at least a fault the Italians haven’t learned,’ he replied. ‘But, after all, as you say, it may be the better fortune to have less and worry less—I’d like to believe it.’