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‘The list has possibilities, Miss Royston,’ he assured her, ‘though of course one can’t judge without knowing the gentlemen personally. With which one, may I ask, are you going to classify Mr. Sybert?’
‘Oh, in a separate pigeonhole by himself. That is just what makes my collection interesting.’ It was evidently a subject that she discussed with some relish. ‘Most men, you know—you look them over and immediately assign them to a group with a lot of others; but once in a while you come across a man who goes entirely by himself—is what the French call an original—and he is worth studying.’
Mr. Copley took out a cigarette and regarded it speculatively. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘The best study of mankind is man—and so you think Sybert a specimen who deserves a pigeonhole by himself?’
‘Yes, I think he does, though I haven’t quite decided on the hole yet. That’s why it worries me that he didn’t come to the party. One hates to leave these little matters unsolved.’
‘I am sincerely sorry for you to have lost the opportunity. I must tell him your opinion.’
‘No, indeed!’ remonstrated Eleanor. ‘I may meet him again some day, and if you tell him I shall never learn the truth. One’s only chance is to catch them unawares.’
‘You’re a very penetrating person, Miss Royston.’
‘I’ve been out nine seasons,’ she laughed. ‘You can trust me to know a man when I see one!’
‘I wish you’d teach Marcia some of your lore,’ he murmured, as he turned toward the loggia to greet a fresh carriageful of guests.
Even though one man were missing, still a great many others were there, and it had only been an undercurrent of Marcia’s consciousness in any case that had considered the matter. The laughter and babel of voices, the gay preparations and hurrying servants, had had their effect. As Granton clasped about her neck Mr. Copley’s expiatory gift—a copy of an old Etruscan necklace in pearls and uncut emeralds set in hammered gold—she was as pleasurably excited as a young woman may legitimately be on the eve of a birthday ball.
‘There, Granton; that’s all,’ she cried, catching up her very Parisian skirts and flying for the door. ‘Hurry with the others, please, for it won’t be long before the guests begin coming.’
She started downstairs, pulling on her gloves as she went. She paused a moment on the landing to view the scene below, and she blinked once or twice as it dawned upon her that Laurence Sybert was standing at the foot of the stairs watching her, just as he had stood the last time she had seen him when he bade her good-night. For a moment she felt an absurd tremor run through her, and then with something like a gulp she collected herself and went on down to greet him.
‘Mr. Sybert! We were afraid you weren’t coming. When did you get here?’
‘On the late train. I have been in the south, and I didn’t get back to the city till this afternoon.’
‘Your arrivals are always so spectacular,’ she said. ‘We entirely give you up, and then the first thing we know you are quietly standing before us on the rug.’
‘I should call that the reverse of spectacular.’
‘Have you seen Uncle Howard? Did they find any place to put you? The house is cram full.’
‘Oh, yes, I’ve been officially welcomed. I have a bed in your uncle’s dressing-room.’
‘You may be thankful for that. The next comer, I am afraid, will be put in the cellar.’
Sybert did not choose to prolong these amenities of welcome any further, and he stood quietly watching her while she buttoned her gloves. She looked very radiant to-night, with the candle-light gleaming on her hair and her hazel eyes shining with excitement. Her gown was the filmiest, shimmering white with an undertone of green. About her neck the pearls gleamed whitely, each separate jewel a pulsing globe of light. Marcia glanced up and touched the necklace with her hand.
‘This is Uncle Howard’s birthday present,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it lovely? It’s a copy of an old, old necklace in Castellani’s collection. My uncle gives me pearls, and my father is sending wheat.’
She turned aside into the long salon, and Sybert followed her. If Marcia had been momentarily jostled from her self-possession by his sudden appearance, she had completely regained her poise. She was buoyantly at her ease again. There was a touch of intimacy, almost of coquetry, about her manner as she talked; and yet—Sybert noted the fact with a sub-smile of comprehension—she avoided crossing eyes with him. That moment by the fireside was still too vivid. They returned to the hall, and Marcia stepped to the door leading on to the loggia. The cornice was outlined with tiny coloured lamps, while a man was lighting others by the terrace balustrade. She glanced back at Sybert, who was standing still in the hall.
‘You aren’t going out?’ he asked.
‘Just a moment. I want to see how it looks.’
He looked at her bare shoulders with a slight frown. ‘Bring the signorina a wrap,’ he said to the servant at the door.
‘I don’t need a wrap,’ said Marcia; ‘it’s a warm night.’
Sybert shook his head with an expression that was familiar.
‘Oh, if you wish to say anything, say it!’ she cried. ‘Only please don’t look at me with that smile. It’s the way you looked the first time I saw you—and I don’t like it.’
‘I have nothing to say. When a young woman threatened with malaria proposes to go out into an Italian night, bare-shouldered, a mere man is left speechless.’
‘Pride would keep me warm.’
‘I haven’t a doubt of it; but in case it should for the moment fail–’ He took the long white cloak from the man’s arm and glanced at it with another expression as he placed it on her shoulders. It was composed mostly of chiffon and lace.
‘All is vanity that comes from a Paris shop!’ laughed Marcia.
Sybert lit a cigarette and followed her. ‘Well?’ he asked, as they paused by the terrace balustrade. ‘Does it meet with your approval?’
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ she replied as she looked back at the broad, white façade with its gleaming windows. There was no moon, but a clear, star-sprinkled sky. In all the dark landscape the villa alone was a throbbing centre of life and light. Rows of coloured lanterns were beginning to outline the avenue leading to the gate, and in the ilex grove tiny red and blue and white bulbs glowed among the branches like the blossoms of some tropical night-blooming cereus. Servants were hurrying past the windows, musicians were commencing to tune their instruments; everywhere was the excitement of preparation.
‘And this is your birthday,’ he said. ‘I suppose you have received many pretty speeches to-day, Miss Marcia; I hope they may all come true.’ She glanced up in his face, and he looked down with a smile. ‘Twenty-three is a great age!’
A shadow flitted across her face. ‘Isn’t it?’ she sighed. ‘I thought twenty-two was bad enough—but twenty-three! It won’t be many years before I’ll be really getting old.’
Sybert laughed. ‘It’s been a long time since I saw twenty-three—when I first came back to Rome.’
‘Twelve years,’ said Marcia.
‘It’s an easy enough problem if you care to work it out. I don’t care to, any more.’
‘It’s not bad for a man,’ she said; ‘but a woman grows old so young!’
‘You need not worry over that just now. The grey hairs will not come for some time yet.’
‘I’m not worrying,’ she laughed. ‘I was just thinking—it isn’t nice to grow old, is it?’
‘Certainly not. It’s the great tragedy of life; and it comes to all, Miss Marcia—to you as well as to the poorest peasant girl in Castel Vivalanti. Life, after all, contains some justice.’
Marcia turned her back to the shining villa and looked down over the great Campagna stretching away darkly under the stars, with here and there the gleam of a shepherd’s fire, built to ward off the poison in the air.
‘Things are not very just,’ she said slowly.
‘Not very,’ he agreed; ‘and one has little faith that they ever will be—either in this world or the next.’
‘It would be comfortable, wouldn’t it, if you could only believe that people are unfortunate as a punishment—because they deserve to be.’
‘It would be a beautiful belief, but one which you can scarcely hold in Italy.’
‘Poor Italy!’ she sighed.
‘Ah—poor Italy!’ he echoed.
With a sudden motion he threw away his cigarette over the balustrade and immediately lit another. Marcia watched his face in the flare of the match. The eyes seemed deeper-set than usual, the jaw more boldly marked, and there were nervous lines about the mouth. His face seemed to have grown thinner in the last few weeks.
They turned away and sauntered toward the ilex grove.
‘There are, however, compensations,’ he went on presently. ‘Our poor peasants do not have all the pleasures, but they do not have all the pains, either. There are a great many girls in Castel Vivalanti who will never have a birthday ball’—he glanced from the lighted villa behind them to the glowing vista in front, the green stretch of the ilex walk with the shimmering fountain at the end—‘whose lives will be very bare, indeed. They will work and eat and sleep, and love and perhaps hate, and that is all. You have many other pleasures which they could never understand. You enjoy the Egoist, for instance. But also’—he paused—‘you can suffer many things they cannot understand. You are an individual, while they are merely human beings. Gervasio’s stepmother married a husband, and doubtless loved him very much and cried for him a week after he was dead. Then she married another, and saw no difference between him and the first. She may have to work hard, and she may be hungry sometimes, but she will escape the worst suffering in life, which you, with all your privileges, may not escape, Marcia.’
‘One would rather not escape it,’ she answered. ‘I should rather feel what there is to feel.’
‘Ah!’ he breathed, ‘so should we all! And these poor devils of peasants, who can’t feel anything but their hunger and weariness, lose the most of life. They are not even human beings; they are merely beasts of burden, hard-working, patient, unthinking oxen, who go the way they are driven, not dreaming of their strength. That is the unfairness; that is where society owes them a debt; they have no chance to develop. However,’ he broke off with a short laugh, ‘it’s not the time to bother you with other people’s troubles—on your birthday night. We will hope, after all, that you may not have any very grave ones of your own.’
They had reached the fountain and they paused. They were alone in a fairy grove, with a nightingale pouring out his soul in the branches above their heads. Marcia stood looking down the dim, green alley they had come by, breathing deeply. She knew that Sybert’s eyes were on her, and slowly she raised her head and looked up in his face. For a moment they stood in silence; then, as the sound of carriage wheels reached them from the avenue, she started and turned away.
‘The people are beginning to come. I am afraid that Aunt Katherine will be wondering where I am,’ she said in a voice that trembled slightly.
Sybert followed her in silence.
Some one had once said to her that Sybert’s silences meant more than other men’s words, and as they turned back she tried to think who it had been. Ah—she remembered! It was the contessa.
CHAPTER XIX
Throughout the evening while she was laughing and talking with the stream of guests, Marcia kept a sub-conscious notion of Sybert’s movements. She saw him in the hall exchanging jokes with the English ambassador. She saw him talking to Eleanor Royston and bending over the Contessa Torrenieri. And once, as she whirled past in a waltz, she caught sight of his dark face in a doorway with his eyes fixed on her, and she forgave him Eleanor and the contessa. She was conscious all the time of a secret amazement at herself. Sybert had suddenly become for her the only person in the room, and while she was outwardly intent upon what other men were saying, her mind was filled with the picture of his face as he had looked during that silent moment by the fountain. She went through the evening in a maze, conscious only of the approach of the one dance she had with him.
When the evening was nearing its end she was suddenly brought to her senses by the realization that she was strolling down one of the ilex walks with Paul Dessart at her side. She had been rattling on unheedingly, and she scarcely knew how they had come there. Her first instinct was one of self-preservation; she felt what was coming, and she wanted to ward it off. Anything to get back to the crowd again! She paused and looked back at the lighted villa, listening to the sound of the violins rising above the murmur of voices and laughter. For a moment she almost felt impelled to turn and run. Since she had stopped, Paul stopped perforce, and looked at her questioningly.
‘I—I think we’d better go back,’ she stammered. ‘This dance is almost over, and–’
‘We won’t go back just yet,’ he returned. ‘I want to talk to you. You owe me a few moments, Marcia. Come here and sit down and listen to what I have to say.’
He turned into the little circle by the fountain and motioned toward a garden seat. Marcia dropped limply upon it and looked at him with an air of pleading. There was no circumlocution; both knew that the time had come when everything must be said, and Paul went to the point.
‘Well, Marcia, are you going to marry me?’
Marcia sat opening and shutting her fan nervously, trying to frame an answer that would not hurt him.
‘I’ve been patient; I haven’t bothered you. You surely ought to know your own mind now. You’ve had a month—it hasn’t been exactly a happy month for me. Tell me, please, Marcia. Don’t keep me waiting any longer.’
‘Oh, Paul!’ she said, looking back with half-frightened eyes. ‘It’s all a mistake.’
‘A mistake! What do you mean? Marcia, I trusted you. You can’t throw me over now. Tell me quickly!’
‘Forgive me, Paul,’ she faltered miserably. ‘I—I was mistaken. I thought, that day in the cloister–’
He realized that, somehow, she was slipping away from him and that he must fight to get her back. He bent toward her and took her hand, with his glowing, eager face close to hers, his words coming so fast that he fairly stuttered.
‘Yes, that day in the cloister. You did care for me then, didn’t you, Marcia—just a little bit? You let me hope—you told me there wasn’t any other man—you’ve been kind to me ever since. That’s what I’ve lived on this whole month—the memory of that afternoon. Tell me what the trouble is—don’t let anything come between us. We’ve had such a happy spring—let it keep on being happy. We’ve lived in Arcady, Marcia—you and I. Why should we ever leave it? Why must we go back—why not go forward? If you cared that afternoon, you can care now. I haven’t changed. Tell me why you hesitate. I don’t want to force you to make up your mind, but this uncertainty is simply hell.’
Marcia listened, breathing fast, half carried away by the impetuous flow of his words. She sat watching him with troubled eyes and silent lips in a sort of stupor. She could not collect her thoughts sufficiently to answer him. What had she to say? she asked herself wildly. What could she say that was adequate?
Paul, bending forward, his eyes close to hers, was waiting expectantly, insistently, for her to speak, when suddenly they were startled by a step on the gravel path before them, and they both looked up to see Laurence Sybert, cigarette in hand, stroll around the corner of the ilex walk. As his eye fell upon them he stopped like a man shot, and for a breathless instant the three faced one another. Then, with a quick rigidity of his whole figure, he bowed an apology and wheeled about. Marcia turned from red to white and snatched her hand away.
Paul watched her a moment with an angry light growing in his eyes. ‘You are in love with Laurence Sybert!’ he whispered.
Marcia shrank back in the corner and hid her face against the back of the seat. Paul bent over her.
‘Look at me,’ he cried; ‘tell me it’s not true. You can’t do it! You’ve been deceiving me. You’ve been lying! Oh, yes, I know you’ve been very careful not to make any promises in so many words, but you’ve made them in other ways, and I believed you. I’ve been fool enough to think you in earnest, and all the time you’ve been amusing yourself!’
Marcia raised her eyes to his. ‘Paul, I haven’t. You are mistaken. I don’t know how I’ve changed; I can’t explain. That day in the cloister I thought I liked you very much. And if Margaret hadn’t come in, perhaps—I wouldn’t have deceived you for a moment, and you know it.’
‘Tell me you don’t love Sybert.’
‘Paul, you have no right–’
‘I have no right! You said there was no one else, and I believed you; and now, when I ask for an explanation, you tell me to go about my business. I suppose you were beginning to get tired of me these last few days, and thought–’
‘You have no right to talk to me this way! I haven’t meant to deceive you. You asked me if there were any one else, and I told you there was not, and it was true. I’m sorry—sorry to hurt you, but it’s better to find it out now.’
Paul rose to his feet with a very hard laugh.
‘Oh, yes, decidedly it’s better to find it out now. It would have been still better if you had found it out sooner.’
He turned his back and kicked the coping of the fountain viciously. Marcia crossed over to him and touched him on the arm.
‘Paul,’ she said, ‘I can’t let it end so. I know I have been very much to blame, but not as you think. I liked you so much.’
He turned and saw the tears in her eyes, and his anger vanished.
‘Oh, I know. I’ve no business to speak so—but—I’m naturally cut up, you know. Don’t cry about it; you can’t help it. If you don’t love me, you don’t, and that ends the matter. I’ll get over it, Marcia.’ He smiled a trifle bleakly. ‘I’m not the fellow to sit down and cry when I can’t have what I want. I’ve gone without things before.’ He offered her his arm. ‘We’ll go back now; I’m afraid you’re missing your dances.’
Marcia barely touched his arm, and they turned back without speaking. He led her into the hall, and bowing with his eyes on the floor, turned back out of doors. She laughed and chatted her way through two or three groups before she could reach the stairs and escape to her own room, where she locked the door and sank down on the floor by the couch. Trouble was beginning for her sooner than she had thought, and underneath the remorse and pity she felt for Paul, the thing that lay like lead on her heart was the look on Sybert’s face as he turned away.
A knock presently came on the door, followed by a rattling of the knob.
‘Marcia, Marcia!’ called Eleanor Royston. ‘Are you in there?’ Marcia raised her head and listened in silence.
The knock came again. She rose and went to the door.
‘What do you want?’ she asked.
‘I want to come in. It’s I—Eleanor. Open the door. Why don’t you come down?’
Marcia shook out her rumpled skirts, pushed back her hair, and opened the door.
‘Everybody’s asking for you. The ambassador says you were engaged to him for a– Why, what’s the matter?’
Marcia drew back quickly into the shadow, and Eleanor stepped in and closed the door behind her.
‘What’s the matter, child?’ she inquired again. ‘You’ve been crying! Has Paul–?’ she asked suddenly. Eleanor’s intuitive faculties were abnormally developed. ‘I suppose he was pretty nasty,’ she proceeded, taking Marcia’s answer for granted. ‘He can be on occasion. But, to tell you the truth, I think he has some cause to be. I think you deserve all you got.’
Marcia sank into a chair with a gesture of weariness, and Eleanor walked about the room handling the ornaments.
‘Oh, I knew he was in love with you. There’s nothing subtle about Paul. He wears his heart on his sleeve, if any one ever did. But if you don’t mind my saying so, Marcia, I think you’ve been playing with rather a high hand. It’s hardly legitimate, you know, to deliberately set out to make a man fall in love with you.’
‘I haven’t been playing. I didn’t mean to.’
‘Oh, nonsense! Men don’t fall in love without a little encouragement; and I’m not blind—I’ve been watching you. If you want my honest opinion, I think you’ve been pretty unfair with Paul.’
‘I know it,’ Marcia said miserably; ‘you can’t blame me any worse than I blame myself. But you just can’t love people if you don’t.’
‘I’m not blaming you for not loving him; it’s for his loving you. That, by using a little foresight, might have been avoided. However, I don’t know that I’m exactly the person to preach.’ Eleanor dropped into a chair with a short laugh, and leaned forward with her chin in her hand and her eyes on Marcia’s face. ‘I have a theory, Marcia—it’s more than a theory: it’s a superstition,—that some day we’ll be paid in our own coin. I’m twenty-eight, and a good many men have thought they were in love with me, while I myself have never managed to fall in love with any of them. But I’m going to, some day—hard—and then either he’s not going to care about me or something’s going to be in the way so that we can’t marry. It’s going to be a tragedy. I know it as well as I know I’m sitting here. I’m going to pay for my nine seasons, and with interest. It makes me reckless; the score is already so heavy against me that a few more items don’t count. But I know my tragedy’s coming, and the longer I put it off the worse it’s going to be. It’s a nice superstition; I’ll share it with you, Marcia.’
Marcia smiled rather sorrily. It was not a superstition she cared to have thrust upon her just then. She was divining it for herself, and did not need Eleanor to put it into words.
‘As for Paul, you couldn’t do anything else, of course. You’re not fitted to each other for a moment, and you’ll grow more unfitted every day. Paul needs some one who is more objective—who doesn’t think too much—some one like—well, like Margaret, for instance. In the meantime, you needn’t worry; he’ll manage to survive it.’ She rose with another laugh and stood over Marcia’s chair. ‘It’s over and done with, and can’t be helped; there’s nothing to cry about. But mark my words, Marcia Copley, you’ll be falling in love yourself some day, and then I—Paul will be avenged. Meanwhile there are several years before you in which you can have a very good time. Come on; we must go downstairs. The people will be leaving in a little while. Bathe your eyes, and I’ll fix your hair.’
Marcia went downstairs and laughed and danced and talked again, and once she almost stopped in the middle of a speech to wonder how she could do it. It was finally with heartfelt thankfulness that she watched the people beginning to leave. Once, as she was bidding a group good night, she caught sight of Sybert in the hall bending over the contessa’s hand. She covertly studied his face, but it was more darkly inscrutable than ever. She slipped upstairs as soon as the last carriage had rolled away; it was not until long after the sunlight had streamed into her windows, however, that she finally closed her eyes. Eleanor Royston’s pleasant ‘superstition’ she was pondering very earnestly.
CHAPTER XX
The ball ended, the guests gone, Villa Vivalanti forgot its one burst of gaiety, and settled down again to its usual state of peaceful somnolence. The days were growing warmer. White walls simmering in the sunshine, fragrant garden borders resonant with the hum of insects, the cool green of the ilex grove, the sleepy, slow drip of the fountain—it was all so beautifully Italian, and so very, very lonely! During the hot mid-days Marcia would sit by the ruins of the old villa or pace the shady ilex walks with her feelings in a tumult. She had seen neither Paul Dessart nor Laurence Sybert since the evening of her birthday, and that moment by the fountain when the three had faced each other silently was not a pleasant memory. It was one, however, which recurred many times a day.
Of Sybert Marcia heard no news whatever. In reply to her casual question as to when he would be at the villa again, her uncle had remarked that just at present Sybert had more important things to think of than taking a villeggiatura in the Sabine hills. But of Paul Dessart and the Roystons most unexpected news had come. Paul’s father had had an ‘attack’ brought on by overwork, and they were all of them going home. The letters were written on the train en route for Cherbourg; a long letter from Margaret, a short one from Eleanor. The latter afforded some food for reflection, but the reflection did not bring enlightenment.