Джин Уэбстер - The Wheat Princess

‘Really, is it for me?’ she asked. ‘It’s lovely, Mr. Dessart; and when I go away from Rome I can remember both you and the villa by it.’

‘When you go away?’ he asked, with an audible note of anxiety in his voice. ‘But I thought you had come to live with your uncle.’

‘Oh, for the present,’ she returned. ‘But I’m going back to America in the indefinite future.’

He breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief.

‘The indefinite future doesn’t bother me. Before it comes you’ll change your mind—everybody does. It’s merely the present I want to be sure of.’

Marcia glanced at him a moment with a half-provocative laugh; and then, without responding, she turned her head and appeared to study the stone village up on the height. She was quite conscious that he was watching her, and she was equally conscious that her pale-blue muslin gown and her rosebud hat formed an admirable contrast to the frowning old merman. When she turned back there was a shade of amusement in her glance. Paul did not speak, but he did not lower his eyes nor in any degree veil his visible admiration. She rose with a half-shrug and brushed back a stray lock of hair that was blowing in her eyes.

‘I’m hungry,’ she remarked in an exasperatingly matter-of-fact tone. ‘Let’s go back and get some tea.’

‘Will Mrs. Copley receive a jacket and knickerbockers?’

‘Mrs. Copley will be delighted. Visitors are a godsend at Villa Vivalanti.’

They passed from the deep shade of the cypresses to the sun-flecked laurel path that skirted the wheat field. As they strolled along, in no great hurry to reach the villa, they laughed and chatted lightly; but the most important things they said occurred in the pauses when no words were spoken. The young man carried his hat in his hand, carelessly switching the branches with it as he passed. His shining light-brown hair—almost the colour of Marcia’s own—lay on his forehead in a tangled mass and stirred gently in the wind. She noted it in an approving sidewise glance, and quickly turned away again lest he should look up and catch her eyes upon him.

In the ilex grove they paused for a moment as the sound of mingled voices reached them from the terrace.

‘Listen,’ Marcia whispered, with her finger on her lips; and as she recognized the tones she made a slight grimace. ‘My two enemies! The Contessa Torrenieri and Mr. Sybert. The contessa has a villa at Tivoli. This is very kind of her, is it not? Nine miles is a long distance just to pay a call.’

As they advanced toward the tea-table, placed under the trees at the end of the terrace, they found an unexpectedly august party—not only the Contessa Torrenieri and the secretary of the Embassy, but the American consul-general as well. The men had evidently but just arrived, as Mrs. Copley was still engaged with their welcome.

‘Mr. Melville, you come at exactly the right time. We are having mushroom ragoût to-night, which, if I remember, is your favourite dish—but why didn’t you bring your wife?’

‘My wife, my dear lady, is at present in Capri and shows no intention of coming home. Your husband, pitying my loneliness, insisted on bringing me out for the night.’

‘I am glad that he did—we shall hope to see you later, however, when Mrs. Melville can come too. Mr. Sybert,’ she added, turning toward the younger man, ‘you can’t know how we miss not having you drop in at all hours of the day. We didn’t realize what a necessary member of the family you had become until we had to do without you.’

Marcia, overhearing this speech, politely suppressed a smile as she presented the young painter. He was included in the general acclaim.

‘This is charming!’ Mrs. Copley declared. ‘I was just complaining to the Contessa Torrenieri that not a soul had visited us since we came out to the villa, and here are three almost before the words are out of my mouth!’

Pietro, appearing with a trayful of cups, put an end to these amenities; and, reinforced by Gerald, they had an unusually festive tea-party. Mr. Copley had once remarked concerning Paul Dessart that he would be an ornament to any dinner-table, and he undoubtedly proved himself an ornament to-day.

Melville, introducing the subject of a famous monastery lately suppressed by the government, gave rise to a discussion involving many and various opinions. The contessa and Dessart hotly defended the homeless monks; while the other men, from a political point of view, were inclined to applaud the action of the premier. Their arguments were strong, but the little contessa, two slender hands gesticulating excitedly, stanchly held her own; though a ‘White’ in politics, her sympathies, on occasion, stuck persistently to the other side. The church had owned the property for five centuries, the government for a quarter of a century. Which had the better right? And aside from the justice of the question—Dessart backed her up—for ascetic reasons alone, the monks should be allowed to stay. Who wished to have the beauties of frescoed chapels and carved choir-stalls pointed out by blue-uniformed government officials whose coats didn’t fit? It spoiled the poetry. Names of cardinals and prelates and Italian princes passed glibly; and the politicians finally retired beaten. Marcia, listening, thought approvingly that the young artist was a match for the diplomats, and she could not help but acknowledge further that whatever faults the contessa might possess, dullness was not among them.

It was Gerald, however, who furnished the chief diversion that afternoon. Upon being forbidden to take a third maritozzo , he rose reluctantly, shook the crumbs from his blouse, and drifted off toward the ilex grove to occupy himself with the collection of lizards which he kept in a box under a stone garden seat. The group about the tea-table was shortly startled by a splash and a scream, and they hastened with one accord to the scene of the disaster. Mr. Copley, arriving first, was in time to pluck his son from the fountain, like Achilles, by a heel.

‘What’s the matter, Howard?’ Mrs. Copley called as the others anxiously hurried up.

‘Nothing serious,’ he reassured her. ‘Gerald has merely been trying to identify himself with his environment.’

Gerald, dripping and sputtering, came out at this point with the astounding assertion that Marietta had pushed him in. Marietta chimed into the general confusion with a volley of Latin ejaculations. She push him in! Madonna mia , what a fib! Why should she do such a thing as that when it would only put her to the trouble of dressing him again? She had told him repeatedly not to fall into the fountain, but the moment her back was turned he disobeyed.

Amid a chorus of laughter and suggestions, of wails and protestations, the nurse, the boy, and his father and mother set out for the house to settle the question, leaving the guests at the scene of the tragedy. As they strolled back to the terrace the contessa very adroitly held Sybert on one side and Dessart on the other, while with a great deal of animation and gesture she recounted a diverting bit of Roman gossip. Melville and Marcia followed after, the latter with a speculative eye on the group in front, and an amused appreciation of the fact that the young artist would very much have preferred dropping behind. Possibly the contessa divined this too; in any case, she held him fast. The consul-general was discussing a criticism he had recently read of the American diplomatic service, and his opinion of the writer was vigorous. Melville’s views were likely to be both vigorously conceived and vigorously expressed.

‘In any case,’ he summed up his remarks, ‘America has no call to be ashamed of her representative to Italy. His Excellency is a fine example of the right man in the right place.’