For the next week or so Marcia avoided meeting people. There were no visitors at the , and it was 175 easy to find for not going into Rome. She felt an overwhelming to meeting any of her friends—to meeting any one, in truth, who even knew her name. It seemed to her that beneath their smiles and pleasant speeches she could read their thoughts; that the words ‘wheat, wheat, wheat’ rang as an undertone to every sentence that was spoken. Her horseback rides were ridden in the direction away from Castel Vivalanti, and if, by chance, she did meet any of her former friends the villagers, she past, looking the other way.
Mrs. Copley was engaged with preparations for the coming ball. It was to be in honour of the Roystons, partially in honour of Marcia’s birthday, and all of Rome—or as much of it as existed for the Copleys—was to be asked to stop the night either at Villa Vivalanti or at the contessa’s villa in Tivoli. Marcia, her aunt complained, showed an lack of interest in these absorbing preparations. She was usually ready enough with suggestions, and her listlessness did not pass unnoticed. Mr. Copley’s eyes occasionally rested upon her with a guiltily worried expression, and if she caught the look she immediately assumed an air of gaiety. Neither had made the slightest reference to the subject of that evening’s scene, except upon the arrival of a characteristic cablegram from Willard Copley, in which he informed his daughter that he was sending her a transport of wheat as a birthday present.
‘You see, Uncle Howard,’ she had said as she handed him the message, ‘it is possible to do good as well as harm by telegraph.’
Copley read it with a slight smile. ‘After all, I’m afraid he’s no worse than the rest of us!’ and with that, wheat was a tabooed subject.
For the future, however, he was particularly thoughtful toward his niece to show that he was sorry, and she met his advances more than half-way to show that she had forgiven; and, all in all, they came to a better understanding because of their falling out. Mrs. Copley accounted for Marcia’s (and possibly nearest the truth) on the ground that she had taken a touch of in the old wine-cellar, and she dosed her with quinine until the poor girl’s head rang.
176 It happened therefore that when the evening came to attend a musicale at the Contessa Torrenieri’s villa, Marcia could very decline. The occasion of the function was the count’s return from the Riviera; and although Marcia had some little curiosity in regard to the count, still it did not mount to such proportions that she was ready to face the rest of the world for its sake.
Tivoli and Villa Torrenieri were a long nine miles away, and Villa Vivalanti that evening dined earlier than usual. As Marcia came downstairs in response to Pietro’s summons, she paused a moment on the landing; she had caught the sound of Sybert’s low voice in the . She had not seen him since the ending of the San Marco festa, and she had not yet on just what footing their relations were. She stood hesitating with a very slight quickening of the pulse, and then with a thrill of as an explanation for his unexpected visit presented itself—he had returned from Naples and come out to Villa Vivalanti for the purpose of attending the contessa’s musicale. Marcia went on downstairs more slowly, and entered the salon with a none too cordial air. Sybert’s own greeting was in his usual of polite . His manner contained not the slightest suggestion of any misunderstanding in the past. It that he knew nothing of the party; he was clothed in an unpretentious dinner-jacket. But he expressed his willingness to attend, in spite of the lack of invitation—it was doubtless waiting for him in Naples, he declared—provided his host would lend him a coat. His host , and Sybert inquired, with a glance from Mrs. Copley’s and jewels to Marcia’s simple white woollen gown, what time they were planning to start.
‘About eight; it takes almost two hours to get there,’ said Mrs. Copley. ‘Marcia is not going,’ she added.
‘Why not, Miss Marcia?’
She looked a trifle self-conscious as she put her excuse. ‘I’ve been having a little touch of malaria, and Aunt Katherine thought perhaps the night air——’
‘I remember, when I was a boy in school, I used frequently to have headaches on Monday mornings,’ said Sybert, with a show of sympathy.
177 Marcia sat in her room till she heard the carriage drive away, then she dragged a wicker chair out to the balcony which overlooked the eastern hills, already darkened into against the sky. She sat leaning back with her hands clasped in her lap, watching the outlines of the old fade into the night. She thought of the pale young with his questioning eyes, and wondered what sort of troubles people who lived in had. They were at least not her troubles, she smiled, as she thought of Paul Dessart.
Suddenly she leaned over the railing and the light breeze as it floated up from the garden. with the sweet of lilies and oleanders was the heavy odour of a cigar. Her pulses suddenly quickened. Could——? She pushed her chair back and rose with an impatient movement. Pietro was holding a with his friends again, and entertaining them with her uncle’s tobacco. The night was and she was cold. She turned into the dark room with a little laugh at herself: she was staying away from the contessa’s musicale to avoid the night air?
She groped about the table for a book and started downstairs with the half-hearted intention of reading out the evening in the salon. A wood fire had been that afternoon, to the slight dampness which the stone walls seemed to at the slightest suggestion of an eastern wind. It had burned low now, and the embers gave out a slight glow which was not by the two candles on the table—Pietro’s soul evidently looked upon the lamp as unnecessary when Mr. and Mrs. Copley were away. Marcia piled on more sticks, with a shake of her head at Italian servants. The one thing in the world that they cannot learn is to build a fire; generations of economy having ingrained within them a notion that fuel is too precious to burn.
The blaze once more started, instead of ringing for a lamp and settling down to her book, she dropped into a chair and sat lazily watching the flames. Italy had got its hold upon her, with its spell of Lethian . She wished only to close her eyes and drift idly with the current.
Presently she heard the outer door open and close, and 178 steps cross the hall. She looked up with a start to see Laurence Sybert in the .
‘What’s the matter—did I surprise you?’ he inquired.
‘Yes; I thought you had gone to the party.’
‘I was in the wine-cellar just as much as you,’ he returned, with a little laugh, as he drew up a chair beside her. ‘Why can’t I have malaria too?’
His sudden appearance had been disconcerting, and her usual self-assurance seemed to be wandering to-night. She did not know what to say, and she half rose.
‘I was just going to ring for the lamp when you came. Pietro must have forgotten it. Would you mind——’
Sybert glanced lazily across the room at the bell. ‘Oh, sit still. We have light enough to talk by, and you surely aren’t intending to read when you have a guest.’ He stretched out his hand and took possession of her book.
‘I don’t flatter myself that you stayed away from the contessa’s to talk to me,’ she returned as she leaned back again with a slight .
‘Why else should I have stayed?’ he inquired. ‘Do you think, when it came to the point, your uncle wouldn’t give me a coat?’
‘Probably you found that it didn’t fit.’
Sybert laughed. ‘No, Miss Marcia; I didn’t even try. I stayed because—I wanted to talk with you.’
She let the statement pass in silence, and Sybert addressed himself to a careful rearrangement of the burning wood. When he finally laid down the he remarked in a casual tone, ‘I owe you an apology—will you accept it?’
‘What for?’
‘You appear to have several counts against me—suppose we don’t go into details. I offer a collective apology.’
‘Because you called me “the Wheat Princess”? Oh, yes, I’ll excuse it; I dare say you were .’
He leaned forward with a slight frown.
‘Certainly I was not justified; it was neither kind nor gentlemanly, and I am sorry that I said it. I can only promise to have better manners in the future.’
Marcia dismissed the subject with a gesture.
‘Let me tell you about the good your money has done.’
‘No, please don’t! I don’t want to hear. I know that 179 it’s horrible, and that you did the best with it possible. I’m glad if it helped. My father is sending some wheat that will be here in a few weeks.’
‘Miss Marcia,’ he said slowly, ‘I wish you wouldn’t take this matter so badly. Your uncle was out of his senses when he talked to you, and he didn’t realize what he was saying. He feels cut up about it. He told me to-night that he was afraid he had spoiled your summer, and that he wouldn’t have hurt you for the world.’
Marcia’s eyes suddenly filled with tears and she bit her lip. Sybert leaned forward and the fire.
‘I should like to talk to you about your uncle,’ he said, with his eyes on the embers. ‘He is one of the finest men I have ever known. And it is not often that a man in his position amounts to much—that is, as a human being; the temptations are all the other way. Most men, you know, with leisure and his tastes would—well, go in for collecting carved ivory and hammered silver and all that rubbish. Nobody understands what he is trying to do, least of all the people he is doing it for. He does it very quietly and in his own way, and he doesn’t ask for thanks. Still, just a little would be grateful; and, instead of that, he is abused at every turn. This wheat business increased the feeling against him, and naturally he feels sore. The other evening he’d just been reading some articles about the trouble in a Roman paper, and I had been telling him about your encounter with the village people when you came in. It was an unfortunate moment you chose, and he forgot himself. I wish you would be as kind to him as you can, for he has a good many critics outside, and—’ Sybert hesitated an instant—‘he needs a little sympathy at home.’
Marcia drew a deep breath.
‘I understand about Uncle Howard,’ she said. ‘I used to think sometimes—’ she hesitated too—‘that he wasn’t very happy, but I didn’t know the reason. Of course I don’t blame him for what he said; I know he was worried, and I know he didn’t mean it. In any case, I should rather know the truth. But about the wheat,’ she continued, ‘my father is not to blame the way you think he is. He and Uncle Howard don’t understand each other, but I understand them both, and if I had 180 known sooner I could have stopped it. He didn’t have the remotest idea of harming Italy or any other country. He just thought about getting ahead of a lot of others, and—you know what men are like—making peop............