The Wheat Princess

‘A boy and a dog, O Prince,’ said Sybert, as he set Gervasio on his feet. ‘Miss Marcia must plead guilty to the dog, but I will take half the blame for the boy.’

Gervasio and Marcellus were conveyed into the hall, and it would be difficult to say which was the more frightened of the two. Marcellus slunk under a chair and whined at the lights, and Gervasio looked after him as if he were tempted to follow. Mrs. Copley, attracted by the disturbance, appeared from the salon, and a medley of questions and explanations ensued. Gervasio, meanwhile, sat up very straight and very scared, clutching the arms of the big carved chair in which Sybert had placed him.

‘We thought he might be useful to run errands,’ Sybert suggested as they finished the account of the boy’s maltreatment.

‘Poor child!’ said Mrs. Copley. ‘We can find something for him to do. He is small, but he looks intelligent. I have always intended to have a little page—or he might even do as a tiger for Gerald’s pony-cart.’

‘No, Aunt Katherine,’ expostulated Marcia. ‘I shan’t have him dressed in livery. I don’t think it’s right to turn him into a servant before he’s old enough to choose.’

‘The position of a trained servant is a much higher one than he would ever fill if left to himself. He is only a peasant child, my dear.’

‘He is a psychological problem,’ she declared. ‘I am going to prove that environment is everything and heredity’s nothing, and I shan’t have him dressed in livery. I found him, and he’s mine—at least half mine.’

She glanced across at Sybert and he nodded approval.

‘I will turn my share of the authority over to you, Miss Marcia, since it appears to be in such good hands.’

‘Marcia shall have her way,’ said Mr. Copley. ‘We’ll let Gervasio be an unofficial page and postpone the question of livery for the present.’

‘He can play with Gerald,’ she suggested. ‘We were wishing the other night that he had some one to play with, and Gervasio will be just the person; it will be good for his Italian.’

‘I suspect that Gervasio’s Italian may not be useful for drawing-room purposes,’ her uncle laughed.

‘I shall send him to college,’ she added, her mind running ahead of present difficulties, ‘and prove that peasants are really as bright as princes, if they have the same chance. He’ll turn out a genius like—like Crispi.’

‘Heaven forbid!’ exclaimed Sybert, but he examined Marcia with a new interest in his eyes.

‘We can decide on the young man’s career later,’ Copley suggested. ‘He seems to be embarrassed by these personalities.’

Gervasio, with all these august eyes upon him, was on the point of breaking out into one of his old-time wails when Mrs. Copley fortunately diverted the attention by inquiring if they had dined.

‘Neither Mr. Sybert nor I have had any dinner,’ Marcia returned, ‘and I shouldn’t be surprised if Gervasio has missed several. But Marcellus, under the chair there, has had his,’ she added.

Mrs. Copley recalling her duties as hostess, a jangling of bells ensued. Pietro appeared, and stared at Gervasio with as much astonishment as is compatible with the office of butler. Mrs. Copley ordered dinner for two in the dining-room and for one in the kitchen, and turned the boy over to Pietro’s care.

‘Oh, let’s have him eat with us, just for to-night.’ Marcia pleaded. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Mr. Sybert? He’s so hungry; I love to watch hungry little boys eat.’

‘Marcia!’ expostulated her aunt in disgust. ‘How can you say such things? The child is barefooted.’

‘Since my own son and heir is banished from the dinner-table, I object to an unwashed alien’s taking his place,’ Copley put in. ‘Gervasio will dine with the cook.’

To Gervasio’s infinite relief, he was led off to the kitchen and consigned to the care of François, who later in the evening confided to Pietro that he didn’t believe the boy had ever eaten before. Marcia’s and Sybert’s dinner that night was an erratic affair and quite upset the traditions of the Copley ménage. To Pietro’s scandalization, the two followed him into the kitchen between every course to see how their protégé was progressing.

Gervasio sat perched on a three-legged stool before the long kitchen table, his little bare feet dangling in space, an ample towel about his neck, while an interested scullery-maid plied him with viands. He would have none of the strange dishes that were set before him, but with an expression of settled purpose on his face was steadily eating his way through a bowl of macaroni. It was with a sigh that he had finally to acknowledge himself beaten by the Copley larder. Marcia called Bianca (Marietta’s successor) and bade her give Gervasio a bath and a bed. Bianca had known the boy in his pre-villa days, and, if anything, was more wide-eyed than Pietro on his sudden promotion.

As Marcia was starting upstairs that night, Sybert strolled across the hall toward her and held out his hand.

‘How would it be if we declared an amnesty,’ he inquired—‘at least until Gervasio is fairly started in his career?’

She glanced up in his face a second, surprised, and then shook her head with an air of scepticism. ‘We can try,’ she smiled, ‘but I am afraid we were meant to be enemies.’

Her room was flooded with moonlight; she undressed without lighting her candle, and slipping on a light woollen kimono, sat down on a cushion beside the open window. She was too excited and restless to sleep. She leaned her chin on her hand, with her elbow resting on the low window-sill, and let the cool breeze fan her face.

After a time she heard some one strike a match on the loggia, and her uncle and Sybert came out to the terrace and paced back and forth, talking in low tones. She could hear the rise and fall of their voices, and every now and then the breeze wafted in the smell of their cigars. She grew wider and wider awake, and followed them with her eyes as they passed and repassed in their tireless tramp. At the end of the terrace their voices sank to a low murmur, and then by the loggia they rose again until she could hear broken sentences. Sybert’s voice sounded angry, excited, almost fierce, she thought; her uncle’s, low, decisive, half contemptuous.

Once, as they passed under the window, she heard her uncle say sharply: ‘Don’t be a fool, Sybert. It will make a nasty story if it gets out—and nothing’s gained.’

She did not hear Sybert’s reply, but she saw his angry gesture as he flung away the end of his cigar. The men paused by the farther end of the terrace and stood for several minutes arguing in lowered tones. Then, to Marcia’s amazement, Sybert leaped the low parapet by the ilex grove and struck out across the fields, while her uncle came back across the terrace alone, entered the house, and closed the door. She sat up straight with a quickly beating heart. What was the matter? Could they have quarrelled? Was Sybert going to the station? Surely he would not walk. She leaned out of the window and looked after him, a black speck in the moonlit wheat-field. No, he was going toward Castel Vivalanti. Why Castel Vivalanti at this time of the night? Had it anything to do with Gervasio?—or perhaps Tarquinio, the baker’s son? She recalled her uncle’s words: ‘Don’t be a fool. It will make a nasty story if it gets out.’ Perhaps people’s suspicions against him were true, after all. She thought of his look that night in the train. What was behind it? And then she thought of the picture of him in the carriage with the little boy in his arms. A man who was so kind to children could not be bad at heart. And yet, if he were all that her uncle had thought him, why did he have so many enemies—and so many doubtful friends?

The breeze had grown cold, and she rose with a quick shiver and went to bed. She lay a long time with wide-open eyes watching the muslin curtains sway in the wind. She thought again of Paul Dessart’s words in the warm, sleepy, sunlit cloister; of the little crowd of ragamuffins chasing the dog; of her long, silent ride with Sybert; of the moonlit gateway of Castel Vivalanti, with the dark, high walls towering above. Her thoughts were growing hazy and she was almost asleep when, mingled with a half-waking dream, she heard footsteps cross the terrace and the hall door open softly.

CHAPTER XI

Marcia was awakened the next morning by Bianca knocking at the door, with the information that Gervasio wished to get up, and that, as his clothes were very ragged, she had taken the liberty the night before of throwing them away.

For an instant Marcia blinked uncomprehendingly; then, as the events of the evening flashed through her mind, she sat up in bed, and solicitously clasping her knees in her hands, considered the problem. She felt, and not without reason, that Gervasio’s future success at the villa depended largely on the impression he made at this, his first formal appearance. She finally dispatched Bianca to try him with one of Gerald’s suits, and to be very sure that his face was clean. Meanwhile she hurried through with her own dressing in order to be the first to inspect his rehabilitation.

As she was putting the last touches to her hair she heard a murmur of voices on the terrace, and peering out cautiously, beheld her uncle and Sybert lounging on the parapet engaged with cigarettes. She had not been dreaming, then; those were Sybert’s steps she had heard the night before. She puckered her brow over the puzzle and peered out again. Whatever had happened last night, there was nothing electrical in the air this morning. The two had apparently shoved all inflammable subjects behind them and were merely waiting idly until coffee should be served.

It was a beautifully peaceful spring morning that she looked out upon. The two men on the terrace appeared to be in mood with the day—careless, indifferent loungers, nothing more. And last night? She recalled their low, fierce, angry tones; and the lines in her forehead deepened. This was a chameleon world, she thought. As she stood watching them, Gervasio for the moment forgotten, Gerald ran up to the two with some childish prattle which called forth a quick, amused laugh. Sybert stretched out a lazy hand and drew the boy toward him. Carefully balancing his cigarette on the edge of one of the terra-cotta vases, he rose to his feet and tossed the little fellow in the air four or five times. Gerald screamed with delight and called for more. Sybert laughingly declined, as he resumed his cigarette and his seat on the balustrade.

The little play recalled Marcia to her duty. With a shake of her head at matters in general, she gave them up, and turned her face toward Gervasio’s quarters. Bianca was on her knees before the boy, giving the last touches to his sailor tie, and she turned him slowly around for inspection. His appearance was even more promising than Marcia had hoped for. With his dark curls still damp from their unwonted ablutions, clad in one of Gerald’s baggiest sailor-suits of red linen with a rampant white collar and tie, except for his bare feet (which would not be forced into Gerald’s shoes) he might have been a little princeling himself, backed by a hundred noble ancestors.

Marcia sank down on her knees beside him. ‘You little dear!’ she exclaimed as she kissed him.

Gervasio was not used to caresses, and for a moment he drew back, his brown eyes growing wide with wonder. Then a smile broke over his face, and he reached out a timid hand and patted her confidingly on the cheek. She kissed him again in pure delight, and taking him by the hand, set out forthwith for the loggia.

‘Ecco! my friends. Isn’t he beautiful?’ she demanded.

Mr. Copley and Sybert sprang to their feet and came forward interestedly.

‘Who denies now that it’s clothes that make the man?’

‘I can’t say but that he was as picturesque last night,’ her uncle returned; ‘but he’s undoubtedly cleaner this morning.’

‘Where’s Gerald?’ asked Sybert. ‘Let’s see what he has to say of the new arrival.’

Gerald, who had but just discovered Marcellus, was delightedly romping in the garden with him, and was dragged away under protest and confronted with the stranger. He examined him in silence a moment and then remarked, ‘He’s got my cloves on.’ And suddenly, as a terrible idea dawned upon him, he burst out: ‘Is he a new bruvver? ‘Cause if he is you can take him away.’

‘Oh, my dear!’ his mother remonstrated in horror. ‘He’s a little Italian boy.’

Gerald was visibly relieved. He examined Gervasio again from this new point of view.

‘I want to go wifout my shoes and socks,’ he declared.

‘Oh, but he’s going to wear shoes and socks, too, as soon we can get some to fit him,’ said Marcia.

‘Do you want to see my lizhyards?’ Gerald asked insinuatingly, suddenly making up his mind and pulling Gervasio by the sleeve.

Gervasio backed away.

‘You must talk to him in Italian, Gerald,’ Sybert suggested. ‘He’s like Marietta: he doesn’t understand anything else. I should like to have another look at those lizards myself,’ he added. ‘Come on, Gervasio,’ and taking a boy by each hand, he strode off toward the fountain.

Mrs Copley looked after them dubiously, but Marcia interposed, ‘He’s a dear little fellow, Aunt Katherine, and it will be good for Gerald to have some one to play with.’

‘Marcia’s right, Katherine; it won’t hurt him any, and I doubt if the boy’s Italian is much worse than Bianca’s.’

Thus Gervasio’s formal installation at the villa. For the first week or so his principal activity was eating, until he was in the way of becoming as rosy-cheeked as Gerald himself. During the early stages of his career he was consigned to the kitchen, where François served him with soup and macaroni to the point of bursting. Later, having learned to wield a knife and fork without disaster, he was advanced to the nursery, where he supped with Gerald under the watchful eye of Granton.

Taken all in all, Gervasio proved a valuable addition to the household. He was sweet-tempered, eager to please, and pitifully grateful for the slightest kindness. He became Gerald’s faithful henchman and implicitly obeyed his commands, with only an occasional rebellion when they were over-oppressive. He was quick to learn, and it was not long before he was jabbering in a mixture of Italian and English with a vocabulary nearly as varied as Gerald’s own.

The first week following Gervasio’s advent was a period of comparative quiet at the villa, but one fairly disturbing little contretemps occurred to break the monotony.

The boy had been promised a reward of sweet chocolate as soon as he should learn to wear shoes and stockings with a smiling face—shoes and stockings being, in his eyes, an objectionable feature of civilization. When it came time for payment, however, Marcia discovered that there was no sweet chocolate in the house, and, not to disappoint him, she ordered Gerald’s pony-carriage, and taking with her the two boys and a groom, set out for Castel Vivalanti and the baker’s. Had she stopped to think, she would have known that to take Gervasio to Castel Vivalanti in broad daylight was not a wise proceeding. But it was a frequent characteristic of the Copleys that they did their thinking afterward. The spectacle of Gervasio Delano in a carriage with the principino, and in new clothes, with his face washed, very nearly occasioned a mob among his former playmates. The carriage was besieged, and Marcia found it necessary to distribute a considerable largess of copper before she could rid herself of her following.

As she laughingly escaped from the crowd and drove out through the gateway a man stepped forward from the corner of the wall and motioned her to stop. For a moment a remembrance of her aunt’s rencontre with the Camorrist flashed through her mind, and then she smiled as she reflected that it was broad daylight and in full sight of the town. She pulled the pony to a standstill and asked him what he wanted. He was Gervasio’s stepfather, he said. They were poor, hard-working people and did not have enough to eat, but they were very lonely without the boy and wished to have him back. Even American princes, he added, couldn’t take poor people’s children away without their permission. And he finished by insinuating that if he were paid enough he might reconsider the matter.

Marcia did not understand all that he said, but as Gervasio began to cry, and at the same time clasped both hands firmly about the seat in an evident determination to resist all efforts to dislodge him, she saw what he meant, and replied that she would tell the police. But the man evidently thought that he had the upper hand of the situation, and that she would rather buy him off than let the boy go. With a threatening air, he reached out and grasped Gervasio roughly by the arm. Gervasio screamed, and Marcia, before she thought of possible consequences, struck the man a sharp blow with the whip and at the same time lashed the pony into a gallop. They dashed down the stony road and around the corners at a perilous rate, while the man shouted curses from the top of the hill.

They reached the villa still bubbling with excitement over the adventure, and caused Mrs. Copley no little alarm. But when Marcia greeted her uncle’s arrival that night with the story, he declared that she had done just right; and without waiting for dinner, he remounted his horse, and galloping back to Castel Vivalanti, rode straight up to the door of the little trattoria, where the fellow was engaged in drinking wine and cursing Americans. There he told him, before an interested group of witnesses, that Gervasio was not his child; that since he could not treat him decently he had forfeited all claim to him; and that if he tried to levy any further blackmail he would find himself in prison. Wherewith he wheeled his horse’s head about and made a spectacular exit from the town. If anything were needed to strengthen Gervasio’s position with Mr. Copley, this incident answered the purpose.

As a result of the adventure, Marcia, for the time, dropped Castel Vivalanti from her calling-list and extended her acquaintance in the other direction. She came to be well known as she galloped about the country-side on a satin-coated little sorrel (born and bred in Kentucky), followed by a groom on a thumping cob, who always respectfully drew up behind her when she stopped. As often as she could think of any excuse, she visited the peasants in their houses, laughing gaily with them over her own queer grammar. It was an amused curiosity which at first actuated her friendliness. Their ingenious comments and naïve questions in regard to America proved an ever-diverting source of interest; but after a little, as she understood them better, she grew to like them for their own stanch virtues. When she looked about their gloomy little rooms, with almost no furnishing except a few copper pots and kettles and a tawdry picture of the Madonna, and saw what meagre, straitened lives they led, and yet how bravely they bore them, her amusement changed to respect. Their quick sympathy and warm friendliness awakened an answering spark, and it was not long before she had discovered for herself the lovable charm of the Italian peasant.

She explored, in the course of her rides, many a forgotten little mountain village topping a barren crag of the Sabines, and held by some Roman prince in almost the same feudal tenure as a thousand years ago. They were picturesque enough from below, these huddling grey-stone hamlets shooting up from the solid rock; but when she had climbed the steeply winding path and had looked within, she found them miserable and desolate beyond belief. She was coming to see the under side of a great deal of picturesqueness.

Meanwhile, though life was moving in an even groove at Villa Vivalanti, the same could not be said of the rest of Italy. Each day brought fresh reports of rioting throughout the southern provinces, and travellers hurrying north reported that every town of any size was under martial law. In spite of reassuring newspaper articles, written under the eye of the police, it was evident that affairs were fast approaching a crisis. There was not much anxiety felt in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome, for the capital was too great a stronghold of the army to be in actual danger from mobs. The affair, if anything, was regarded as a welcome diversion from the tediousness of Lent, and the embassies and large hotels where the foreigners congregated were animated by a not unpleasurable air of excitement.

Conflicting opinions of every sort were current. Some shook their heads wisely, and said that in their opinion the matter was much more serious than appeared on the surface. They should not be surprised to see the scenes of the French Commune enacted over again; and they intimated further, that since it had to happen, they were very willing to be on hand in time to see the fun.

Many expressed the belief that the trouble had nothing to do with the price of bread; the wheat famine was merely a pretext for stirring up the people. It was well known that the universities, the younger generation of writers and newspaper men, even the ranks of the army, were riddled with socialism. What more likely than that the socialists and the church adherents had united to overthrow the government, intending as soon as their end was accomplished to turn upon each other and fight it out for supremacy? It was the opinion of these that the government should have adopted the most drastic measures possible, and was doing very foolishly in catering to the populace by putting down the dazio. Still others held that the government should have abolished the dazio long before, and that the people in the south did very well to rise and demand their rights. And so the affairs of the unfortunate Neapolitans were the subject of conversation at every table d’hôte in Rome; and the forestieri sojourning within the walls derived a large amount of entertainment from the matter.

Marcia Copley, however, had heard little of the gathering trouble. She did not read the papers, and her uncle did not mention the matter at home. He was too sick at heart to dwell on it uselessly, and it was not a subject he cared to discuss with his niece. His family, indeed, saw very little of him, for he had thrown himself into the work of the Foreign Relief Committee with characteristic energy, and he spent the most of his time in Rome. Marcia’s interest in sight-seeing had come to a sudden halt since the afternoon of Tre Fontane. She had ventured into the city only once, and then merely to attend to the purchase of clothes for Gervasio. The Roystons, on that occasion, had been out when she called at their hotel, and her feeling of regret was mingled largely with relief as she left her card and retired in safety to Villa Vivalanti.

She had not analysed her emotions very thoroughly, but she felt a decided trepidation at the thought of seeing Paul. The trepidation, however, was not altogether an unpleasant sensation. The scene in the cloisters had returned to her mind many times, and she had taken several brief excursions into the future. What would he say the next time they met? Would he renew the same subject, or would he tacitly overlook that afternoon, and for the time let everything be as it had been before? She hoped that the latter would be the case. It would give a certain piquancy to their relations, and she was not ready—just at present—to make up her mind.

Paul, on his side, had also pondered the question somewhat. Events were not moving with the rapidity he wished. Marcia, evidently, would not come into Rome, and he could think of no valid excuse for going out to the villa. His pessimistic forecast of events had proved true. Holy Week found the Roystons still in the city, treating themselves to orgies of church-going. As he followed his aunt from church to church (there are in the neighbourhood of three hundred and seventy-five in Rome, and he says they visited them all that week) he indulged in many speculations as to the state of Marcia’s mind in regard to himself. At times he feared he had been over-precipitate; at others, that he had not been precipitate enough.

His aunt and cousins returned from a flying visit to the villa, with the report that Marcia had adopted a boy and a dog and was solicitously engaged with their education. ‘What did she say about me, Madge?’ Paul boldly inquired.

‘She said you were a very impudent fellow,’ Margaret retorted; and in response to his somewhat startled expression she added more magnanimously: ‘You needn’t be so vain as to think she said anything about you. She never even mentioned your name.’