Джин Уэбстер - The Wheat Princess

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?’