CHAPTER XXII
THE next few days were anxious ones for Italy. The straw-weavers ofTuscany were marching into Florence with the cry, '_Pane olavore!_'--'Bread or work!'--and in the north not bread, but revolutionwas openly the watchword. Timid tourists who had no desire to be mixedup in another '49 were scurrying across the frontiers into France andSwitzerland; adventurous gentlemen from the Riviera, eager to enjoy thefun and not unwilling to take advantage of a universal tumult, weregaily scrambling in. The ministry, jostled from its usual apathy, hadvigorously set itself to suppressing real and imaginary plots.Opposition newspapers were sequestered and the editors thrown intojail; telegrams and letters were withheld, public meetings broken up,and men arrested in the streets for singing the 'Hymn of Labour.' Thesecret police worked night and day. Every cafe and theatre and crowdhad its spies disguised as loungers; and none dared speak the truth tohis neighbour for fear his neighbour was in the pay of the premier.
In Milan the rioters had been lashed into a frenzy by their first tasteof 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 obeyedbut sullenly when ordered to fire upon the mob. In their hearts many ofthem sympathized. The socialists were out in force and working hard,and their motto was, 'Spread the discontent!' Priests and students fromthe universities were stirring up the peasants in the fields and urgingthem on to revolt. All dissatisfied classes were for the moment unitedin their desire to overthrow the existing government; what should takeits place could be decided later. When Savoy was ousted, then theothers--the republicans, the priests, the socialists, the hungry mob inthe streets--could fight it out among themselves. And as each factionin its heart believed itself to be the strongest, the fight, if itshould come, was like to prove the end of Italy.
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While the rest of the kingdom was filled with tumult, only faintechoes reached Villa Vivalanti dozing peacefully in the midst of itshills. Marcia, sitting with folded hands, fretted uselessly at herforced inaction. She scarcely left the villa grounds; she wascarrying out Sybert's suggestion far more literally than he had meantit. She had not the moral courage to face the countryside; it seemedas if every peasant knew about the wheat and followed her withaccusing eyes. Even the villa servants appeared to her awakenedsensibilities to go about their duties perfunctorily, as if they tooshared the general distrust in their employers. The last week draggedslowly to its end. There were only four more days to be spent in thevilla, and Marcia now was impatient to leave it. She wanted to get upinto the mountains--anywhere out of Italy--where she need never hearthe word 'wheat' again.
Saturday--the week-end that the Melvilles were to spend at thevilla--dawned oppressively hot. It was a foretaste of what Rome coulddo in midsummer. Not a leaf was stirring; there was no suggestion ofmist on the hills, and the sun beat down glaringly upon a gaudilycoloured landscape. The outer walls of the villa fairly sizzled in thelight; but inside the atmosphere was respectably tempered. The greenVenetian blinds had been dropped over the windows, the rugs rolledback, and the floors sprinkled with water. The afternoon sun might doits worst outside, but the large airy rooms were dark and cool--andquiet. Half an hour before, the walls had echoed Gerald's despairingcry, 'I won't go to sleep! I _won't_ go to sleep!' for Gerald was atrue Copley and he took his siestas hardly. But he had eventuallydropped off in the midst of his revolt; and all was quiet now whenMarcia issued from her room, garden hat in hand.
She paused with a light foot at Gerald's door. The little fellow wasspread out, face downward, on the bed, his arms and legs thrown to thefour winds. Marcia smiled upon the little clenched fists and dampyellow curls and tiptoed downstairs. On a pile of rugs in the lowerhall Gervasio and Marcellus were curled up together, sleepingpeacefully and happily. She smiled a blessing on them also. Next toGerald, Gervasio was the dearest little fellow in the world, andMarcellus the dearest and the homeliest dog.
She raised the blind and stepped on to the loggia. A blast of hot airstruck her, and she hesitated dubiously. It was scarcely the weatherfor an afternoon stroll, but the ilex grove looked cool and inviting,and she finally made a courageous dash across the terrace and plungedgratefully into its shady fastnesses. The sun-beaten world outside thelittle realm of green was an untempered glare of heat and colour. Theonly sounds which smote the drowsy air were the drip, drip of thefountain and the murmurous drone of insects in the borders of thegarden. Marcia paused by the fountain, and dropping down upon thecoping, dipped her fingers idly in the water.
Shaking the drops of water from her fingers, she rose and stood amoment looking down the green alley she had come by toward the sunnyblaze of terrace at the end. She closed her eyes and pictured it as ithad looked on her birthday night, a fairy scene, with the tiny bulbs ofcoloured light glowing among the branches. She pictured Sybert's faceas he had stood beside her. It seemed almost as if the moment wouldcome back again, if she only thought about it hard enough. And then theremembrance of that other moment followed, and the expression onSybert's face as he had turned away. What did he think? she askedherself for the hundredth time; and she turned her back upon thefountain 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 andyellows were so crude that no artist would have dared to paint them intheir untoned brilliancy. Marcia paused to study the effect. Her eyeswandered from this daring foreground across scarcely less brilliantolive groves and vineyards to Castel Vivalanti on its mountain-top, anirregular mass of yellow ochre against a sky of cobalt blue. There wasno attempt at shading. The colours were as unaffectedly primary as anillumination from some old manuscript, or as the outlines a child fillsin from his tin box of half a dozen little cakes of paint. This Italywas so uncompromising in her moods. No variant note was allowed tocreep in to mar the effect she was striving for. Marcia recalled thesudden storm of the mountain, how fiercely untamed, how intense it hadbeen; she thought of the moonlight nights of the spring, when the moodwas lyrical--the soft outline of tower and rain, the songs ofnightingales, the heavy odours of acacia and magnolia blossoms. Italywas an impressionist, and her children were like her. There were nohalf-tones in the Italian nature any more than in the Italianlandscape. There were many varying moods, but each in itself wasconcentrated. Just now there were storms, perhaps, but before longthere would be moonlight and singing and love-making again, and theclouds would be forgotten.
She strolled on to the ruins of the old villa and sat down among thecrumbling arches. She was in a very different mood herself than on thatother afternoon of the early spring when Paul Dessart had found herthere. She thought of the little sketch he had painted, and recalledher own words as he gave it to her: 'I will keep it to remember you andthe villa by when I go home to America.' The words had been spokenlightly, but now they sounded prophetic. Everything had seemed beforeher then; now all seemed behind. A few months more and she would beback in America, with possibly nothing more than the sketch to rememberher life in Italy by--and it had meant so much to her; now that it wasslipping away, she realized how much. She seemed to have grown more, tohave felt more, than in all her life before; and she hatedinexpressibly to leave it behind.
Crossing to the little grotto that had formed the subject of thepicture, she stood gazing pensively at the dilapidated moss-grown pileof 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 lookedthat day--so enthusiastic and young and debonair--and she thought ofhim without a tremor. Many things had changed since then, and she hadchanged with them. If only Eleanor's suspicion might be true, that hewould come to care for Margaret! She clung to the suggestion. Eleanor's'superstition' need trouble her no more; Paul would not need to beavenged.
She turned aside, and as she did so something caught
her eyes. Sheleaned over to look, and then started back with an exclamation ofalarm. A man was lying asleep, almost at her feet, hidden by the tallweeds that choked the entrance to the grotto. The first involuntarythought that flashed to her mind was of Gervasio's stepfather, butimmediately she knew that he was not the sleeper. Gervasio's stepfatherwas 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. Shelaughed at her own fear; it was some peasant who had come from thefields to rest in the shade.
She leaned over to look again, and as she did so her heart suddenlyleaped into her mouth. The man's shirt was open at the throat, andthere was a dark-purple crucifix tattooed upside down upon his breast.For a second she stood staring, powerless to move; the next, she wasrunning wildly across the blazing wheat field toward the shelter of thevilla, with a frightened glance behind at the shadow of the cypresses.