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In Milan the rioters had been lashed into a frenzy by their first taste of blood, and for three days the future of United Italy looked dark. Wagons and tramcars were overturned in the streets to make barricades. Roofs and windows rained down tiles and stones, and the soldiers obeyed but sullenly when ordered to fire upon the mob. In their hearts many of them sympathized. The socialists were out in force and working hard, and their motto was, ‘Spread the discontent!’ Priests and students from the universities were stirring up the peasants in the fields and urging them on to revolt. All dissatisfied classes were for the moment united in their desire to overthrow the existing government; what should take its place could be decided later. When Savoy was ousted, then the others—the republicans, the priests, the socialists, the hungry mob in the streets—could fight it out among themselves. And as each faction in its heart believed itself to be the strongest, the fight, if it should come, was like to prove the end of Italy.
While the rest of the kingdom was filled with tumult, only faint echoes reached Villa Vivalanti dozing peacefully in the midst of its hills. Marcia, sitting with folded hands, fretted uselessly at her forced inaction. She scarcely left the villa grounds; she was carrying out Sybert’s suggestion far more literally than he had meant it. She had not the moral courage to face the countryside; it seemed as if every peasant knew about the wheat and followed her with accusing eyes. Even the villa servants appeared to her awakened sensibilities to go about their duties perfunctorily, as if they too shared the general distrust in their employers. The last week dragged slowly to its end. There were only four more days to be spent in the villa, and Marcia now was impatient to leave it. She wanted to get up into the mountains—anywhere out of Italy—where she need never hear the word ‘wheat’ again.
Saturday—the week-end that the Melvilles were to spend at the villa—dawned oppressively hot. It was a foretaste of what Rome could do in midsummer. Not a leaf was stirring; there was no suggestion of mist on the hills, and the sun beat down glaringly upon a gaudily coloured landscape. The outer walls of the villa fairly sizzled in the light; but inside the atmosphere was respectably tempered. The green Venetian blinds had been dropped over the windows, the rugs rolled back, and the floors sprinkled with water. The afternoon sun might do its worst outside, but the large airy rooms were dark and cool—and quiet. Half an hour before, the walls had echoed Gerald’s despairing cry, ‘I won’t go to sleep! I won’t go to sleep!’ for Gerald was a true Copley and he took his siestas hardly. But he had eventually dropped off in the midst of his revolt; and all was quiet now when Marcia issued from her room, garden hat in hand.
She paused with a light foot at Gerald’s door. The little fellow was spread out, face downward, on the bed, his arms and legs thrown to the four winds. Marcia smiled upon the little clenched fists and damp yellow curls and tiptoed downstairs. On a pile of rugs in the lower hall Gervasio and Marcellus were curled up together, sleeping peacefully and happily. She smiled a blessing on them also. Next to Gerald, Gervasio was the dearest little fellow in the world, and Marcellus the dearest and the homeliest dog.
She raised the blind and stepped on to the loggia. A blast of hot air struck her, and she hesitated dubiously. It was scarcely the weather for an afternoon stroll, but the ilex grove looked cool and inviting, and she finally made a courageous dash across the terrace and plunged gratefully into its shady fastnesses. The sun-beaten world outside the little realm of green was an untempered glare of heat and colour. The only sounds which smote the drowsy air were the drip, drip of the fountain and the murmurous drone of insects in the borders of the garden. Marcia paused by the fountain, and dropping down upon the coping, dipped her fingers idly in the water.
Shaking the drops of water from her fingers, she rose and stood a moment looking down the green alley she had come by toward the sunny blaze of terrace at the end. She closed her eyes and pictured it as it had looked on her birthday night, a fairy scene, with the tiny bulbs of coloured light glowing among the branches. She pictured Sybert’s face as he had stood beside her. It seemed almost as if the moment would come back again, if she only thought about it hard enough. And then the remembrance of that other moment followed, and the expression on Sybert’s face as he had turned away. What did he think? she asked herself for the hundredth time; and she turned her back upon the fountain and hurried down the laurel walk as if to shut the memory out.
The wheat field to-day was ablaze with flaming poppies. The reds and yellows were so crude that no artist would have dared to paint them in their untoned brilliancy. Marcia paused to study the effect. Her eyes wandered from this daring foreground across scarcely less brilliant olive groves and vineyards to Castel Vivalanti on its mountain-top, an irregular mass of yellow ochre against a sky of cobalt blue. There was no attempt at shading. The colours were as unaffectedly primary as an illumination from some old manuscript, or as the outlines a child fills in from his tin box of half a dozen little cakes of paint. This Italy was so uncompromising in her moods. No variant note was allowed to creep in to mar the effect she was striving for. Marcia recalled the sudden storm of the mountain, how fiercely untamed, how intense it had been; she thought of the moonlight nights of the spring, when the mood was lyrical—the soft outline of tower and rain, the songs of nightingales, the heavy odours of acacia and magnolia blossoms. Italy was an impressionist, and her children were like her. There were no half-tones in the Italian nature any more than in the Italian landscape. There were many varying moods, but each in itself was concentrated. Just now there were storms, perhaps, but before long there would be moonlight and singing and love-making again, and the clouds would be forgotten.
She strolled on to the ruins of the old villa and sat down among the crumbling arches. She was in a very different mood herself than on that other afternoon of the early spring when Paul Dessart had found her there. She thought of the little sketch he had painted, and recalled her own words as he gave it to her: ‘I will keep it to remember you and the villa by when I go home to America.’ The words had been spoken lightly, but now they sounded prophetic. Everything had seemed before her then; now all seemed behind. A few months more and she would be back in America, with possibly nothing more than the sketch to remember her life in Italy by—and it had meant so much to her; now that it was slipping away, she realized how much. She seemed to have grown more, to have felt more, than in all her life before; and she hated inexpressibly to leave it behind.
Crossing to the little grotto that had formed the subject of the picture, she stood gazing pensively at the dilapidated moss-grown pile of stones. The afternoon when Paul had sketched it seemed years before; in reality it was not two months. She thought of him as he had looked that day—so enthusiastic and young and debonair—and she thought of him without a tremor. Many things had changed since then, and she had changed with them. If only Eleanor’s suspicion might be true, that he would come to care for Margaret! She clung to the suggestion. Eleanor’s ‘superstition’ need trouble her no more; Paul would not need to be avenged.
She turned aside, and as she did so something caught her eyes. She leaned over to look, and then started back with an exclamation of alarm. A man was lying asleep, almost at her feet, hidden by the tall weeds that choked the entrance to the grotto. The first involuntary thought that flashed to her mind was of Gervasio’s stepfather, but immediately she knew that he was not the sleeper. Gervasio’s stepfather was old, with a grizzled beard; it was evident that this man was young, in spite of the fact that his hat was pulled across his eyes. She laughed at her own fear; it was some peasant who had come from the fields to rest in the shade.
She leaned over to look again, and as she did so her heart suddenly leaped into her mouth. The man’s shirt was open at the throat, and there was a dark-purple crucifix tattooed upside down upon his breast. For a second she stood staring, powerless to move; the next, she was running wildly across the blazing wheat field toward the shelter of the villa, with a frightened glance behind at the shadow of the cypresses.
CHAPTER XXIII
Marcia passed the afternoon in a state of nervous impatience for her uncle’s return. She said nothing to Mrs. Copley of the man she had found asleep in the grotto, and the effort to preserve an outward serenity added no little to her inner trepidation. In vain she tried to reason with her fear; it was not a subject which responded to logic. She assured herself over and over again that the man could not be the same Neapolitan who had warned her uncle; that he was safely in prison; and that the tattooed crucifix was only the general mark of a secret society. The assurance did not carry conviction. Her first startled impression had been too deep to be thrown off lightly, and coming just then, in the midst of the rioting and lawlessness, the incident carried additional force. She had lately heard many stories of lonely villas being broken into, of travellers on the Campagna being waylaid and robbed, of the vindictiveness of the Camorra, which her uncle had opposed. The stories were not reassuring; and though she resolutely put them out of her mind, she found herself thinking of them again and again. Italy’s elaborate police system, she knew, was not merely for show.
Mr. Copley and the Melvilles were due at five, but as they had not appeared by half-past, Mrs. Copley decided that they had missed their train, and she and Marcia sat down to tea—or, more accurately, to iced lemonade—without waiting. The table was set under the shade of the ilex trees where the grove met the upper end of the terrace, and where any slight breeze that chanced to be stirring would find them out. Gerald and Gervasio swallowed their allotted glassful and two brioches with dispatch, and withdrew to the cool shadows of the ilex grove to play at horse with poor, patient Bianca and the streaming ribbons of her cap. Mrs. Copley and Marcia took the repast in more leisurely fashion, with snatches of very intermittent conversation. Marcia’s eyes wandered in the pauses to the poppy-sprinkled wheat field and the cypresses beyond.
‘I believe they are coming, after all!’ Mrs. Copley finally exclaimed, as she shaded her eyes with her hands and looked down across the open stretch of vineyards to where the Roman road, a yellow ribbon of dust, divided the fields. ‘Yes, that is the carriage!’
Marcia looked at the moving speck and shook her head. ‘Your eyes are better than mine, Aunt Katherine, if you can recognize Uncle Howard at this distance.’
‘The carriage is turning up our road. I am sure it is they. Poor things! I am afraid they will be nearly dead after the drive in this heat. Rome must have been unbearable to-day.’ And she hastily dispatched Pietro to prepare more iced drinks.
Ten minutes later, however, the carriage had resolved itself into a jangling Campagna wine-cart, and the two resigned themselves to waiting again. By half-past seven Marcia was growing frankly nervous. Could anything have happened to her uncle? Should she have told her aunt and sent some one to meet him with a warning message? Surely no one would dare to stop the carriage on the open road in broad daylight. A hundred wild imaginings were chasing through her brain, when finally, close upon eight, the rumble of wheels sounded on the avenue.
Both Mrs. Copley and Marcia uttered an exclamation of relief. Mrs. Copley had been worried on the score of the dinner, and Marcia for any number of reasons which disappeared with the knowledge that her uncle was safe. They hurried out to the loggia to meet the new-comers, and as the carriage drew up, not only did the Melvilles and Mr. Copley descend, but Laurence Sybert as well. At sight of him Marcia hung back, asking herself, with a quickly beating heart, why he had come.
Mrs. Copley, with the first glance at their faces, interrupted her own graceful words of welcome to cry: ‘Has anything happened? Why are you so late?’
They were visibly excited, and did not wait for greetings before pouring out their news—an attempted assassination of King Humbert on the Pincian hill that afternoon—Rome under martial law—a plot discovered to assassinate the premier and other leaders in control.
The two asked questions which no one answered, and all talked at once—all but Sybert. Marcia noticed that he was unusually silent, and it struck her that his face had a haggard look. He did not so much as glance in her direction, except for a bare nod of greeting on his arrival.
‘Well, well,’ Copley broke into the general babel, ‘it’s a terrible business. You should see the excitement in Rome! The city is simply demoralized; but we’ll give you the particulars later. Let us get into something cool first—we’re all nearly dead. Has it been hot out here? Rome has been a foretaste of the inferno.’
‘And this young man,’ Melville added, laying a hand on Sybert’s arm, ‘just got back from the Milan riots. Hadn’t slept, any to speak of for four days, and what does he do this afternoon but sit down at his desk, determined to make up his back work, Sunday or no Sunday, with the thermometer where it pleases. Your husband and I had to drag him off by main force.’
‘Poor Mr. Sybert! you do look worn out. Not slept for four days? Why, you must be nearly dead! You may go to bed immediately after dinner, and I shall not have you called till Monday morning.’
‘I’ve been sleeping for the last twenty-four hours, Mrs. Copley, and I really don’t need any more sleep at present,’ he protested laughingly, but with a slight air of embarrassment. It was a peculiar trait of Sybert’s that he never liked to be made the subject of conversation, which was possibly the reason why he had been made the subject of so many conversations. This reticence when speaking of himself or his own feelings, struck the beholder as somewhat puzzling. It had always puzzled Marcia, and had been one reason why she had been so persistent in her desire to find out what he was really like.
The party shortly assembled for dinner, the women in the coolest of light summer gowns, the men in white linen instead of evening dress. They went into the dining-room without affording Marcia a chance to catch her uncle alone. The meal did not pass off very gaily. Assassinations were served with the soup, bread riots with the fish, and hypothetical robberies and plots with the further courses; while Pietro presided with a sinister obsequiousness which added darkly to the effect. In vain Mrs. Copley tried to turn the conversation into pleasanter channels. The men were too stirred up to talk of anything else, and the threatened tragedy of the day was rehearsed in all its bearings.
The assassin had dashed out from the crowd that lined the driveway and sprung to the side of the royal carriage before any of the bystanders had realized what was happening. The white-haired aide-de-camp sitting at his Majesty’s side was the first to see, and springing to his feet, he struck the man fiercely in the face just as he raised his arm. Had it not been for the aide-de-camp’s quick action, the man would have plunged his stiletto into the King’s heart.
Mrs. Copley and Mrs. Melville shuddered, and Marcia leaned forward listening with wide eyes.
‘Right on the Pincio, mind you.’ Melville in his excitement thumped the table until the glasses rang. ‘Not a chance of the fellow’s getting off. Scarcely a chance of his accomplishing his purpose. He knew he would be taken. Shouted, “Viva libertà!” as the soldiers grabbed him—I swear it beats me what these fellows are after. “Viva libertà!” That’s what they cried when they put the House of Savoy on the throne, and now they’re trying to pull it off again with the same cry.’
‘I fear the seeds of revolution are sown pretty thick in Italy,’ said Copley.
‘Where aren’t there the seeds of revolution to-day?’ Melville groaned. ‘Central Africa is only waiting a government in order to overturn it.’
‘By the way,’ interpolated Copley, ‘the assassin is a friend of Sybert’s.’
‘A friend of Sybert’s!’ Marcia echoed the words before she considered their form.
Sybert caught the expression and smiled slightly.
‘Not a very dear friend, Miss Marcia. I first made his acquaintance, I believe, on the day that you discovered Marcellus.’
‘How did that happen?’ Mrs. Copley asked.
‘I heard him talking in a café.’
‘It’s a pity you didn’t hand him over,’ said Melville. ‘You would have saved the police considerable trouble. It seems they have been watching him for some time.’
‘I wasn’t handing people over just then,’ Sybert returned dryly. ‘However, I don’t see that the police need complain. It strikes me that he has handed himself over in about as effectual a way as he possibly could; he won’t go about any more sticking stilettos into kings. The Italians are an excitable lot when they once get aroused; they talk more than is wise—but when it comes to doing they usually back down. It seems, however, that this fellow had the courage of his convictions. After all, it was, in a way, rather fine of him, you know.’
‘A pretty poor way,’ Melville frowned.
‘Oh, certainly,’ Sybert acquiesced carelessly. ‘Umberto’s a gentleman. I don’t care to see him knifed.’
‘What I can’t understand,’ reiterated Melville, ‘is the fellow’s point of view. No matter how much he may object to kings, he must know that he can never rid the country of them through assassination; as soon as one king is out of the way, another stands in line to take his place. No possible good could come to the man through Humbert’s death, and he must have known that he had not one chance in a hundred of escaping himself—I confess his motive is beyond me. The only thing that explains it to my mind is that the fellow’s crazy, but the police seem to think he’s entirely sane.’
Sybert leaned back in his chair and studied the flowers in the centre of the table with a speculative frown.
‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘the man was not crazy. I understand his motive, though I don’t know that I can make it clear. It was probably in part mistaken patriotism—but not entirely that. I heard him state it very clearly, and it struck me at the time that it was doubtless, at bottom, the motive for most assassinations. His words, as I remember them, were something like this: “Who is the King? He is only a man. Why is he so different from me? Am I not a man, too? I am, and before I die the King shall know it.”’
Sybert raised his eyes and glanced about the table. Copley nodded and Melville frowned thoughtfully. The two elder ladies were listening with polite attention, and Marcia was leaning forward with her eyes on his face. Sybert immediately dropped his own eyes to the flowers again.
‘There you have the matter in a nutshell. Why did he wish to assassinate the King? As an expression of his own identity. Through a perfectly natural egotistical impulse for self-assertion. The man had been oppressed and trampled on all his life. He was conscious of powers that were undeveloped, of force that he could not use. He was raging blindly against the weight that was crushing him down. The weight was society, but its outward symbol was the King. The King had only one life to lose, and this despised, obscure Neapolitan peasant, the very lowest of the King’s subjects, had it in his power to take that life away. It was the man’s one chance of utterance—his one chance of becoming an individual, of leaving his mark on the age. And, in acting as he did, he acted not for himself alone, but for the people; for the inarticulate thousands who are struggling for some mode of expression, but are bound by cowardice and ignorance and inertia.’
Sybert paused and raised his eyes to Melville’s with a sort of challenge.
‘If that man had been able to obtain congenial work—work in which he could take an interest, could express his own identity; if he could have become a little prosperous, so that he need not fear for his family’s support; why, then—the King’s life would not have been in danger to-day. And as long as there is any man left in this kingdom of Italy,’ he added, ‘who, in spite of honest endeavour, cannot earn enough to support his family, just so long is the King’s life in danger.’
‘And there are thousands of such men,’ put in Copley.
Melville uttered a short laugh. ‘By heavens, it’s true!’ he said. ‘The position of American consul may not carry much glory, but I don’t know that I care to trade it with Umberto for his kingdom.’
‘Do you suppose the King was scared?’ inquired Marcia. ‘I wonder what it feels like to wake up every morning and think that maybe before night you’ll be assassinated.’
‘He didn’t appear to be scared,’ said her uncle. ‘He shrugged his shoulders when they caught the man, and remarked that this was one of the perquisites of his trade.’
‘Really?’ she asked. ‘Good for Umberto!’
‘Oh, he’s no coward,’ said Sybert. ‘He knows the price of crowns these days.’
‘It’s terrible!’ Mrs. Melville breathed. ‘I am thankful they caught the assassin at least. Society ought to sleep better to-night for having him removed.’
‘Ah,’ said Sybert, ‘Society can’t be protected that way. The point is that he leaves others behind to do his work.’
‘The man was from Naples, you say?’ Mrs. Copley asked suddenly.
Her husband read her thoughts and smiled reassuringly. ‘So far as I have heard, my dear, there was no crucifix tattooed upon his breast.’
Marcia raised her head quickly. ‘Uncle Howard,’ she asked, ‘is that the mark of a society or of just that special man?’
‘I can’t say, I’m sure, Marcia,’ he returned with a laugh. ‘I suspect that it’s an original piece of blasphemy on his part, though it may belong to a cult.’
‘When is his time up?’ she persisted. ‘To get out of prison, I mean.’
‘I don’t know; I really haven’t figured it up. There are enough things to worry about without troubling over him.’
In her excitement over the King’s attempted assassination she had almost forgotten the man of the grotto, but her uncle’s careless laugh brought back her terror. The man might at that very moment be watching them from the ilex grove. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder toward the open glass doors which led to the balcony. It was moonlight again. In contrast to the soft radiance of the marble-paved terrace, the ilex shadows were black with the sinister blackness of a pall. She looked down at her plate with a little shiver, and she sat through the rest of the meal in an agony of impatience to get up and move about.
Once she roused herself to listen to the conversation. They were talking of the soldiers; a large detachment of carabinieri had been stationed at Palestrina, and the mountain roads were being patrolled. The carriage that night had passed two men on horseback stationed at the turning where the road to Castel Vivalanti branches off from the Via Prænestina. Mrs. Copley said something about its giving them a feeling of security at the villa to have so many soldiers near, and Melville replied that whatever the crimes of the Italian government, it at least looked after the safety of its guests, Marcia listened with a sigh of relief, and she rose from the table with an almost easy mind. They all adjourned to the salon for coffee, and as soon as she could speak to her uncle without attracting attention she touched him on the arm.
‘Come out on the loggia just a moment, Uncle Howard; I want to tell you something.’
He followed her in some surprise. She went down the steps and paused on the terrace, well out of ear-shot of the salon windows.
‘Uncle Howard, I saw the tattooed man to-day.’
Mr. Copley paused with a match in one hand and a cigar in the other. ‘Whereabouts?’ he asked.
‘Asleep in the ruined grotto.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘There was a crucifix tattooed upside down on his breast.’
‘So!’
He examined the pavement in silence a moment, then he raised his head with an excited little laugh such as a hunter might give when hot on the scent.