Джин Уэбстер - The Wheat Princess

‘The living have a few rights—even in Rome.’

‘They seem to have a good many,’ Dessart agreed. ‘Oh, I know what you reformers want! You’d like to see the city full of smoke-stacks and machinery, and the Campagna laid out in garden plots, and everybody getting good wages and six per cent. interest; with all the people dressed alike in ready-made clothing instead of peasant costume, and nobody poor and nobody picturesque.’

Sybert did not reply for a moment, as with half-shut eyes he studied the distance. He was thinking of a ride he had taken three days before. He had gone out with a hunting-party to one of the great Campagna estates, owned by a Roman prince whose only interest in the land was to draw from it every possible centesime of income. They had stopped to water their horses at a cluster of straw huts where the farm labourers lived, and Sybert had dismounted and gone into one of them to talk to the people. It was dark and damp, with a dirt floor and rude bunks along the sides. There, fifty human beings lived crowded together, breathing the heavy, pestilential air. They had come down to bands from their mountain homes, searching for work, and had sold their lives to the prince for thirty cents a day.

The picture flashed across him now of their pale, apathetic faces, of the dumb reproach in their eyes, and for a second he felt tempted to describe it. But with the reflection that neither of the two before him would care any more about it than had the landlord prince, he changed his expression into a careless shrug.

‘It will be some time before we’ll see that,’ he answered Dessart’s speech.

‘But you’d like it, wouldn’t you?’ Marcia persisted.

‘Yes; wouldn’t you?’

‘No,’ she laughed, ‘I can’t say that I should! I decidedly prefer the peasants as they are. They are far more attractive when they are poor, and since they are happy in spite of it, I don’t see why it is our place to object.’

Sybert eyed the pavement impassively a moment: then he raised his head and turned to Marcia. He swept her a glance from head to foot which took in every detail of her dainty gown, her careless grace as she leaned against the balustrade, and he made no endeavour to conceal the look of critically cold contempt in his eyes. Marcia returned his glance with an air of angry challenge; not a word was spoken, but it was an open declaration of war.

The Roystons approached Rome by easy stages along the Riviera, and as their prospective movements were but vaguely outlined even to themselves, they suffered their approach to remain unheralded. Paul Dessart, since his talk with Marcia, had taken a little dip into the future, with the result that he had decided to swallow any hurt feelings he might possess and pay dutiful court to his relatives. The immediate rewards of such a course were evident.

One sunny morning early in April (he had been right in his forecast of the time: Palm Sunday loomed a week ahead) a carriage drew up before the door of his studio, and Mrs. Royston and the Misses Royston alighted, squabbled with the driver over the fare, and told him he need not wait. They rang the bell, and during the pause that followed stood upon the door-step, dubiously scanning the neighbourhood. It was one of the narrow, tortuous streets between the Corso and the river; a street of many colours and many smells, with party-coloured washings fluttering from the windows, with pretty tumble-haired children in gold ear-rings and shockingly scanty clothing sprawling underfoot. The house itself presented a blank face of peeling stucco to the street, with nothing but the heavily barred windows below and an ornamental cornice four stories up to suggest that it had once been a palace and a stronghold.

Mrs. Royston turned from her inspection of the street to ring the bell again. There was, this time, a suggestion of impatience in her touch. A second wait, and the door was finally opened by one of the fantastic little shepherd models, who haunt the Spanish steps. He took off his hat with a polite ‘ Permesso , signore,’ as he darted up the stairs ahead of them to point the way and open the door at the top. They arrived at the end of the five flights somewhat short of breath, and were ushered into a swept and garnished workroom, where Paul, in a white blouse, his sleeves rolled to the elbows, was immersed in a large canvas, almost too preoccupied to look up. He received his relatives with an air of delighted surprise, stood quite still while his aunt implanted a ponderous kiss upon his cheek, and after a glance at his cousins, kissed them of his own accord.

Mrs. Royston sat down and surveyed the room. It was irreproachably workmanlike, and had been so for a week. Visibly impressed, she transferred her gaze to her nephew.

‘Paul, you are improved,’ she said at length.

‘My dear aunt, I am five years older than I was five years ago.’

‘Well,’ with a sigh of relief, ‘I actually believe you are!’

‘Paul, I had no idea you were such a desirable cousin,’ was Margaret’s frank comment, as she returned from an inspection of the room to a reinspection of him. ‘Eleanor said you wore puffed velveteen trousers. You don’t, do you?’

‘Never had a pair of puffed velveteen trousers in my life.’

‘Oh, yes, you did!’ said Eleanor. ‘You can’t fib down the past that way. Mamma and I met you in the Luxembourg gardens in broad daylight wearing puffed blue velveteen trousers, with a bottle of wine in one pocket and a loaf of bread in the other.’

‘Let the dead past bury its dead!’ he pleaded. ‘I go to an English tailor on the Corso now.’

‘Marcia Copley wrote that she was very much pleased with you, but she didn’t tell us how good-looking you were,’ said Margaret, still frank.

Paul reddened a trifle as he repudiated the charge with a laughing gesture.

‘Don’t you think Miss Copley’s nice?’ pursued Margaret. ‘You’d better think so,’ she added, ‘for she’s one of our best friends.’

Paul reddened still more, as he replied indifferently that Miss Copley appeared very nice. He hadn’t seen much of her, of course.

‘I hope,’ said his aunt, ‘that you have been polite.’

‘My dear aunt,’ he objected patiently, ‘I really don’t go out of my way to be impolite to people,’ and he took the Baedeker from her hand and sat down beside her. ‘What places do you want to see first?’ he inquired.

They were soon deep in computations of the galleries, ruins, and churches that should be visited in conjunction, and half an hour later, Paul and Margaret in one carriage, with Mrs. Royston and Eleanor in a second, were trotting toward the Colosseum; while Paul was reflecting that the path of duty need not of necessity be a thorny one.

During the next week or so Villa Vivalanti saw little more of Marcia than of her uncle. She spent the greater part of her time in Rome, visiting galleries and churches, with studio teas and other Lenten relaxations to lighten the rigour of sight-seeing. Paul Dessart proved himself an attentive cicerone, and his devotion to duty was not unrewarded; the dim crypts and chapels, the deep-embrasured windows of galleries and palaces afforded many chances for stolen scraps of conversation. And Paul was not one to waste his opportunities. The spring was ideal; Rome was flooded with sunshine and flowers and the Italian joy of being alive. The troubles of Italy’s paupers, which Mr. Copley found so absorbing, received, during these days, little consideration from his niece. Marcia was too busy living her own life to have eyes for any but happy people. She looked at Italy through rose-coloured glasses, and Italy, basking in the spring sunshine, smiled back sympathetically.