Politics is a broad word, Marcia, he returned, with a slight frown; and when it stands for oppression and injustice and starving peasants it has to be taken seriously.
Is it really so bad, Uncle Howard?
Good heavens, Marcia! Its awful!
She was startled at his tone, and glanced up at him quickly. He was staring at the light, with a hard look in his eyes and his mouth drawn into a straight line.
Im sorry, Uncle Howard; I didnt know. What can I do?
What can any of us do? he asked bitterly. We can give one day, and its eaten up before night. And we can keep on giving, but what does it amount to? The whole thing is rotten from the bottom.
Cant the people get work?
No; and when they can, their earnings are eaten up in taxes. The people in the southern provinces are literally starving, I tell you; and its worse this year than usual, thanks to men like your father and me.
What do you mean?
For a moment he felt almost impelled to tell her the truth. Then, as he glanced down at her, he stopped himself quickly. She looked so delicate, so patrician, so aloof from everything that was sordid and miserable; she could not help, and it was better that she should not know.
What do you mean? she repeated. What has papa been doing?
Oh, nothing very criminal, he returned. Only at a time like this one feels as if ones money were a reproach. Italys in a bad way just now; the wheat crop failed last year, and that makes it inconvenient for people who live on macaroni.
Do you mean the people really havent anything to eat?
Not much.
How terrible, Uncle Howard! Wont the government do anything?
The government is doing what it can. There was a riot in Florence last month, and they lowered the grain tax; King Humbert gave nine thousand lire to feed the people of Pisa a couple of weeks ago. You can do the same for some other city, if you want to play at being a princess.
I thought you believed in finding them work instead giving them money.
Oh, as a matter of principle, certainly. But you cant have em dying on your door-step, you know.
And to think were having a dinner to-night, when were not the slightest bit hungry!
Im afraid our dinner wouldnt go far toward feeding the hungry in Italy.
How does my dress look, my dear? asked Mrs. Copley, appearing in the doorway. I have been so bothered over it; she didnt fix the lace at all as I told her. These Italian dressmakers are not to be depended upon. I really should have run up to Paris for a few weeks this spring, only you were so unwilling, Howard.
Marcia looked at her aunt a moment with wide-open eyes. Heavens! she thought, do I usually talk this way? No wonder Mr. Sybert doesnt like me! And then she laughed. I think it looks lovely, Aunt Katherine, and I am sure it is very becoming.
The arrival of guests precluded any further conversation on the subject of Italian dressmakers. The Contessa Torrenieri was small and slender and olive-coloured, with a cloud of black hair and dramatic eyes. She had a pair of nervous little hands which were never still, and a magnetic manner which brought the men to her side and created a tendency among the women to say spiteful things. Marcia was no exception to the rest of her sex, and her comments on the contessas doings were frequently not prompted by a spirit of charitableness.
To-night the contessa evidently had something on her mind. She barely finished her salutations before transferring her attention to Marcia. Come, Signorina Copley, and sit beside me on the sofa; we harmonize so wellthis with a glance from her own rose-coloured gown to Marcias rose trimmings. I missed you from tea this afternoon, she added. I trust you had a pleasant walk.
A pleasant walk? Marcia questioned, off her guard.
I passed you as I was driving in the Borghese. But you did not see me; you were too occupied. She shook her head, with a smile. It will not do in Italy, my dear. An Italian girl would never walk alone with a young man.
Fortunately I am not an Italian girl.
You are too strict, contessa, Sybert, who was sitting near, put in with a laugh. If Miss Copley chooses, there is no reason why she should not walk in the gardens with a young man.
A girl of the lower classes perhaps, but not of Signorina Copleys class. With her dowry, she will be marrying an Italian nobleman one of these days.
Marcia flushed with annoyance. I have not the slightest intention of marrying an Italian nobleman, she returned.
One must marry some one, said her companion.
Mr. Melville relieved the tension by inquiring, And who was the hero of this episode, Miss Marcia? We have not heard his name.
Marcia laughed good-humouredly. Your friend Mr. Dessart. The Melvilles exchanged glances. I met him in the gallery, and as the carriage hadnt come and Gerald was playing in the fountain and Marietta was flirting with a gendarme (Dear me! Aunt Katherine, I didnt mean to say that), we strolled about until the carriage came. Im sure I had no intention of shocking the Italian nobility; it was quite unpremeditated.
If the Italian nobility never stands a worse shock than that, it is happier than most nobilities, said her uncle. And the simultaneous announcement of M. Benoit and dinner created a diversion.
It was a small party, and every one felt the absence of that preliminary chill which a long list of guests invited two weeks beforehand is likely to produce. They talked back and forth across the table, and laughed and joked in the unpremeditated way that an impromptu affair calls forth. Marcia glanced at her uncle once or twice in half perplexity. He seemed so entirely the careless man of the world, as he turned a laughing face to answer one of Mrs. Melvilles sallies, that she could scarcely believe he was the same man who had spoken so seriously to her a few minutes before. She glanced across at Sybert. He was smiling at some remark of the contessas, to which he retorted in Italian. I dont see how any sensible man can be interested in the contessa! was her inward comment as she transferred her attention to the young Frenchman at her side.
Whenever the conversation showed a tendency to linger on politics, Mrs. Copley adroitly redirected it, as she knew from experience that the subject was too combustible by far for a dinner-party.
Italy, Italy! These men talk nothing but Italy, she complained to the young Frenchman on her right. Does it not make you homesick for the boulevards?
I suffered the nostalgie once, he confessed, but Rome is a good cure.
Marcia shook her head in mock despair. And you, too, M. Benoit! Patriotism is certainly dying out.
Not while you live, said her uncle.
Oh, I know Im abnormally patriotic, she admitted; but youre all so sluggish in that respect, that you force it upon one.
There are other useful virtues besides patriotism, Sybert suggested.
Wait until you have spent a spring in the Sabine hills, Miss Copley, Melville put in, and you will be as bad as the rest of us.
Ah, mademoiselle, Benoit added fervently, spring-time in the Sabine hills will be compensation sufficient to most of us for not seeing paradise.
I believe, with my uncle, its a kind of Roman fever! she cried. I never expected to hear a Frenchman renounce his native land.
It is not that I renounce France, the young man remonstrated. I lofe France as much as ever, but I open my arms to Italy as well. To lofe another land and peoples besides your own makes you, not littler, but, as you say, widerbroader. We arewe are Ah, mademoiselle! he broke off, if you would let me talk in French I could say what I mean; but how can one be eloquent in this halting tongue of yours?
I believe, with my uncle, its a kind of Roman fever! she cried. I never expected to hear a Frenchman renounce his native land.
It is not that I renounce France, the young man remonstrated. I lofe France as much as ever, but I open my arms to Italy as well. To lofe another land and peoples besides your own makes you, not littler, but, as you say, widerbroader. We arewe are Ah, mademoiselle! he broke off, if you would let me talk in French I could say what I mean; but how can one be eloquent in this halting tongue of yours?
Coraggio, Benoit! You are doing bravely, Sybert laughed.
We are, the young man went on with a sudden inspiration, what you call in English, citizens of the world. You, mademoiselle, are American, La Signora Contessa is Italian, Mr. Carthrope is English, I am French, but we are all citizens of the same world, and in whatever land we find ourselves, there we recognize one another for brothers, and are always at home; for it is still the world.
The young mans eloquence was received with an appreciative laugh. And how about paradise? some one suggested.
Ah, my friends, it is there that we will be strangers! Benoit returned tragically.
Citizens of the world, Sybert turned the stem of his wine glass meditatively as he repeated the phrase. It seems to me, in spite of Miss Marcia, that one cant do much better than that. If youre a patriotic citizen of the world, I should think youd done your duty by mankind, and might reasonably expect to reap a reward in Benoits paradise.
He laughed and raised his glass. Heres to the World, our fatherland! May we all be loyal citizens!
I think, said Mrs. Melville, since this is a farewell dinner and we are pledging toasts, we should drink to Villa Vivalanti and a happy spring in the Sabine hills.
Copley bowed his thanks. If you will all visit the villa we will pledge it in the good wine of Vivalanti.
And heres to the Vivalanti ghost! said the young Frenchman. May it lif long and prosper!
Italys the place for such ghosts to prosper, Copley returned.
Heres to the poor people of Italymay they have enough to eat! said Marcia.
Sybert glanced up in sudden surprise, but she did not look at him; she was smiling across at her uncle.
CHAPTER IV
The announcement that a principe Americano was coming to live in Villa Vivalanti occasioned no little excitement in the village. Wagons with furnishings from Rome had been seen to pass on the road below the town, and the contadini in the wayside vineyards had stopped their work to stare, and had repeated to each other rumours of the fabulous wealth this signor principe was said to possess. The furniture they allowed to pass without much controversy. But they shook their heads dubiously when two wagons full of flowering trees and shrubs wound up the roadway toward the villa. This foreigner must be a grasping personas if there were not trees enough already in the Sabine hills, that he must bring out more from Rome!
The dissection of the character of Prince Vivalantis new tenant occupied so much of the peoples time that the spring pruning of the vineyards came near to being slighted. The fountainhead of all knowledge on the subject was the landlord of the Croce dOro. He himself had had the honour of entertaining their excellencies at breakfast, on the occasion of their first visit to Castel Vivalanti, and with unvarying eloquence he nightly recounted the story to an interested group of loungers in the trattoria kitchen: of how he had made the omelet without garlic because princes have delicate stomachs and cannot eat the food one would cook for ordinary men; of how they had sat at that very table, and the young signorina principessa, who was beautiful as the holy angels in paradise, had told him with her own lips that it was the best omelet she had ever eaten; and of how they had paid fifteen lire for their breakfast without so much as a word of protest, and then of their own accord had given three lire more for mancia]. Eighteen lire. Corpo di Bacco! that was the kind of guests he wished would drop in every day.
But when Domenico Paterno, the baker of Castel Vivalanti, heard the story, he shrugged his shoulders and spread out his palms, and asserted that a prince was a prince all over the world; and that the Americano had allowed himself to be cheated from stupidity, not generosity. For his part, he thought the devil was the same, whether he talked American or Italian. But it was reported, on the other hand, that Bianca Rosini had also talked with the forestieri when she was washing clothes in the stream. They had stopped their horses to watch the work, and the signorina had smiled and asked if the water were not cold; for her part, she was sure American nobles had kind hearts.
Domenico, however, was not to be convinced by any such counter-evidence as this. Smiles are cheap, he returned sceptically. Does any one know of their giving money?
No one did know of their giving money, but there were plenty of boys to testify that they had run by the side of the carriage fully a kilometre asking for soldi, and the signore had only shaken his head to pay them for their trouble.
Si, si, what did I tell you? Domenico finished in triumph. American princes are like any othersperhaps a little more stupid, but for the rest, exactly the same.
There were no facts at hand to confute such logic.
And one night Domenico appeared at the Croce dOro with a fresh piece of news; his son, Tarquinio, who kept an osteria in Rome, had told the whole story.
His name is CopliSignor Edoardo Copliand it is because of himDomenico scowledthat I pay for my flour twice the usual price. When the harvests failed last year, and he saw that wheat was going to be scarce, he sent to America and he bought all the wheat in the land and he put it in storehouses. He is holding it there now while the price goes upupup. And when the poor people in Italy get very, very hungry, and are ready to pay whatever he asks, then perhapsvery charitablyhe will agree to sell. Già, that is the truth, he insisted darkly. Everybody knows it in Rome. Doubtless he thinks to escape from his sin up here in the mountainsbut he will seeit will follow him wherever he goes. Maché! It is the story of the Bad Prince over again.
Finally one morningone Friday morningsome of the children of the village who were in the habit of loitering on the highway in the hope of picking up stray soldi, reported that the Americans horses and carriages had come out from Rome, and that the drivers had stopped at the inn of Sant Agapito and ordered wine like gentlemen. It was further rumoured that the principe himself intended to follow in the afternoon. The matter was discussed with considerable interest before the usual noonday siesta.
It is my opinion, said Tommaso Ferri, the blacksmith, as he sat in the bakers doorway, washing down alternate mouthfuls of bread and onion with Vivalanti wineit is my opinion that the Signor Americano must be a very reckless man to venture on so important a journey on Fridayand particularly in Lent. It is well known that if a poor man starts for market on Friday, he will break his eggs on the way; and because a rich man has no eggs to break, is that any reason the buon Dio should overlook his sin? Things are more just in heaven than on earth, he added solemnly; and in my opinion, if the foreigner comes to-day, he will not prosper in the villa.