The Wheat Princess. Jean Webster
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.’
CHAPTER VI
On the morning after their arrival, Marcia had risen early and set out on horseback to explore the neighbourhood. As Castel Vivalanti, accordingly, was engaged in its usual Saturday-morning sweeping, a clatter of horses’ hoofs suddenly sounded on the tiny Corso (the paving is so villainous that a single horse, however daintily it may step, sounds like a cavalcade), and running to the door, the inhabitants of the village beheld the new signorina Americana gaily riding up the narrow way and smiling to the right and left, for all the world like the queen herself. The women contented themselves with standing in the doorways and staring open-mouthed, but the children ran boldly after, until the signorina presently dismounted and bidding the groom hold her horse, sat down upon a door-step and talked to them with as much friendliness as though she had known them all her life. She ended by asking them what in the world they liked best to eat, and they declared in a single voice for ‘Cioccolata.’
Accordingly they moved in a body to the baker’s, and, to Domenico’s astonishment, ordered all of the chocolate in the shop. And while he was excitedly counting it out the signorina kept talking to him about the weather and the scenery and the olive crop until he was so overcome by the honour that he could do nothing but bob his head and murmur, ‘Si, si, eccelenza; si, si, eccelenza,’ to everything she said.
And as soon as she had mounted her horse again and ridden away, with a final wave of her hand to the little black-eyed children, Domenico hurried to the Croce d’Oro to inform the landlord that he also had had the honour of entertaining the signorina Americana, who had bought chocolate to the amount of five lire—five lire! And had given it all away! The blacksmith’s wife, who had followed Domenico to hear the news, remarked that, for her part, she thought it a sin to spend so much for chocolate; the signorina might have given the money just as well, and they could have had meat for Sunday. But Domenico was more ready this time to condone the fault. ‘Si, si,’ he returned, with a nod of his head: ‘the signorina meant well, no doubt, but she could not understand the needs of poor people. He supposed that they lived on chocolate all the time at the villa, and naturally did not realize that persons who worked for their living found meat more nourishing.
When Marcia returned home with the announcement that she had visited Castel Vivalanti, her uncle replied, with an elaborate frown, ‘I suppose you scattered soldi broadcast through the streets, and have started fifty young Italians on the broad road to Pauperism.’
‘Not a single soldo!’ she reassured him. ‘I distributed nothing more demoralizing than a few cakes of chocolate.’
‘You’ll make a scientific philanthropist if you keep on,’ Mr. Copley laughed, but his inner reflections coincided somewhat with those of the blacksmith’s wife.
Marcia’s explorations were likewise extended in other directions, and before the first week was over she had visited most of the villages from Palestrina to Subiaco. As a result, the chief article of diet in the Sabine mountains bade fair to become sweet chocolate; while Domenico, the baker, instead of being grateful for this unexpected flow of custom, complained to his friends of the trouble it caused. No sooner would he send into Rome for a fresh supply than the signorina would come and carry the whole of it off. At that rate, it was clearly impossible to keep it in stock.
By means of largesses of chocolate to the children, or possibly by a smile and a friendly air, Marcia had established in a very short time a speaking acquaintance with the whole neighbourhood. And on sunny mornings, as she rode between the olive orchards and the wheat fields, more than one worker straightened his back to call a pleased ‘Buona passeggiata, signorina,’ to the fair-haired stranger princess, who came from the land across the water where, it was rumoured, gold could be dug from the ground like potatoes and every one was rich.
All about that region the advent of the foreigners was the subject of chief interest—especially because they were Americani, for many of the people were thinking of becoming Americani themselves. The servants of the villa, when they condescended to drink a glass of wine at the inn of the Croce d’Oro, were almost objects of veneration, because they could talk so intimately of the life these ‘stranger princes’ led—the stranger princes would have been astonished could they have heard some of the details of these recitals.
And so the Copley dynasty began at Castel Vivalanti. The life soon fell into a daily routine, as life in even the best of places will. Three meals and tea, a book in the shadiness of the ilex grove to the tune of the splashing fountain, a siesta at noon, a drive in the afternoon, and a long night’s sleep were the sum of Vivalanti’s resources. Marcia liked it. Italy had got its hold upon her, and for the present she was content to drift. But Mr. Copley, after a few days of lounging on the balustrade, smoking countless cigarettes and hungrily reading such newspapers as drifted out on the somewhat casual mails, had his horse saddled one morning and rode to Palestrina to the station. After that he went into Rome almost every day, and the peasants in the wayside vineyards came to know him as well as his niece; but they did not take off their hats and smile as they did to her, for he rode past with unseeing eyes. Rich men, they said, had no thought for such as they, and they turned back to their work with a sullen scowl. Work at the best is hard enough, and it is a pity when the smile that makes it lighter is withheld; Howard Copley would have been the last to do it had he realized. But his thoughts were bent on other things, and how could the peasants know that while he galloped by so carelessly his mind was planning a way to get them bread?
Marcia spent many half-hours the first few weeks in loitering about the ruins of the old villa. It was a dream-haunted spot which spoke pathetically of a bygone time with bygone ideals. She could never quite reconcile the crumbling arches, the fantastic rock-work, and the grass-grown terraces with the ‘Young