Sybert translated her wishes to the driver again, and they jogged on at a somewhat livelier rate; but by the time they reached the station the train had gone, and there were no Mrs. Copley and Gerald in the waiting-room. Marcia’s face was slightly blank as she realized the situation, and her first involuntary thought was a wish that it had been Paul Dessart instead of Sybert who had come with her. She carried off the matter with a laugh, however, and explained to her companion—
‘I suppose Aunt Katherine thought I had decided to stay in the city with the Roystons. I told her I was going to, but I found they had a dinner engagement. It doesn’t matter, though; I’ll wait here for the next train. There is one for Palestrina before very long—Aunt Katherine went by way of Tivoli. Thank you very much, Mr. Sybert, for coming to the station with me, and really you mustn’t think you have to wait until the train goes. The dog will be company enough.’
Sybert consulted his time schedule in silence. ‘The next train doesn’t leave till seven, and there won’t be any carriage waiting for you. How do you propose to get out to the villa?’
‘Oh, the station-man at Palestrina will find a carriage for me. There’s a very nice man who’s often driven us out.’
Sybert frowned slightly as he considered the question. It was rather inconvenient for him to go out to the villa that night; but he reflected that it was his duty toward Copley to get his niece back safely—as to letting her set out alone on a seven-mile drive with a strange Palestrina driver, that was clearly out of the question.
‘I think I’ll run out with you,’ he said, looking at his watch.
She had seen his frown and feared some such proposition. ‘No, indeed!’ she cried. ‘I shouldn’t think of letting you. I’ve been over the same road hundreds of times, and I’m not in the least afraid. It won’t be late.’
‘The Sabine mountains are infested with bandits,’ he declared. ‘I think you need an escort.’
‘Mr. Sybert, how silly! I know your time is precious, (this was intended for irony, but as it happened to be true, he did not recognize it as such), ‘and I don’t want you to come with me.’
Sybert laughed. ‘I don’t doubt that, Miss Marcia; but I’m coming, just the same. I am sorry, but you will have to put up with me.’
‘I should a lot rather you wouldn’t,’ she returned, ‘but do as you please.’
‘Thank you for the invitation,’ he smiled. ‘There’s about an hour and a half before the train goes—you might run out to the Embassy and have a cup of tea.’
‘Thank you for the invitation, but I think I’ll stay here. I don’t wish to miss a second train, and I shouldn’t know what to do with the dog.’
‘Very well, if you don’t mind staying alone, I will drive out myself and leave a business message for the chief, and then I can take a vacation with a clear conscience. I have a matter to consult your uncle about, and I shall be very glad to run out to the villa.’ He raised his hat in a sufficiently friendly bow and departed.
When he returned, an hour later, he found Marcia feeding the dog with sausage amid an appreciative group of porters, one of whom had procured the meat.
‘Oh, dear!’ she cried. ‘I hoped Marcellus would have finished his meal before you came back. But you aren’t so particular about etiquette as the contessa,’ she added, ‘and don’t object to feeding dogs in the station?’
‘I dare say the poor beast was hungry.’
‘Hungry! I had a whole kilo of sausage, and you should have seen it disappear.’
‘These facchini look as if they would not be averse to sharing his meal.’
‘Poor fellows, they do look hungry.’ Marcia produced her purse and handed them a lira apiece. ‘Because I haven’t any luggage for you to carry, and because you like my dog,’ she explained in Italian. ‘Don’t tell Uncle Howard,’ she added in English. ‘I don’t believe one lira can make them paupers.’
‘It would doubtless be difficult to pauperize them any more than they are at present,’ he agreed.
‘You don’t believe in Uncle Howard’s ideas of charity, do you?’ she inquired tentatively.
‘Oh, not entirely; but we don’t quarrel over it.—Perhaps,’ he suggested, ‘we’d better go out and find an empty compartment while the guards are not looking. I fear they might object to Marcellus—is that his name?—occupying a first-class carriage.’
‘Marcellus, because I found him by the theatre.’
‘Ah—I hope he will turn out as handsome a fellow as his namesake. Come, Marcellus; it’s time we were off.’
He picked the dog up by the nape of the neck and they started down the platform, looking for an empty carriage. They had their choice of a number; the train was not crowded, and first-class carriages in an Italian way-train are rarely in demand. As he was helping Marcia into the car, Sybert was amused to see Tarquinio, the proprietor of the Inn of the Italian People, hurrying into a third-class compartment, with a furtive glance over his shoulder as if he expected every corner to be an ambuscade of the secret police. The warning had evidently fallen on good ground, and the poor fellow was fleeing for his life from the wicked machinations of an omniscient premier.
‘If you will excuse me a moment, I wish to speak to a friend,’ Sybert said as he got Marcia settled; and without waiting for her answer, he strode off down the platform.
She had seen the young Italian, weighed down by a bundle tied up in a bed-quilt, give a glance of recognition as he passed them; and as she watched Sybert enter a third-class compartment she had not a doubt but that the Italian was the ‘friend’ he was searching. She leaned back in the corner with a puzzled frown. Why had Sybert so many queer friends in so many queer places, and why need he be so silent about them?
CHAPTER X
Sybert presently returned and dropped into the seat opposite Marcia; the guard slammed the door and the train pulled slowly out into the Campagna. They were both occupied with their own thoughts, and as neither found much pleasure in talking to the other, and both knew it, they made little pretence at conversation.
Marcia’s excited mood had passed, and she leaned forward with her chin in her hand, watching rather pensively the soft Roman twilight as it crept over the Campagna. What she really saw, however, was the sunlit cloister of St. Paul Without the Walls and Paul Dessart’s face as he talked to her. Was she really in love with him, she asked herself, or was it just—Italy? She did not know and she did not want to think. It was so much pleasanter merely to drift, and so very difficult to make up one’s mind. Everything had been so care-free before, why must he bring the question to an issue? It was a question she did not wish to decide for a long, long time. Would he be willing to wait—to wait for an indefinite future that in the end might never come? Patience was not Paul’s way. Suppose he refused to drift; suppose he insisted on his answer now—did she wish to give him up? No; quite frankly, she did not. She pictured him as he stood there in the cloister, with the warm sunlight and shadow playing about him, with his laughing, boyish face for the instant sober, his eager, insistent eyes bent upon her, his words for once stammering and halting. He was very attractive, very convincing; and yet she sighed. Life for her was still in the future. The world was new and full and varied, and experience was beckoning. There were many things to see and do, and she wanted to be free.
The short southern twilight faded quickly and a full moon took its place in a cloudless turquoise sky. The light flooded the dim compartment with a shimmering brilliancy, and outside it was almost dazzling in its glowing whiteness. Marcia leaned against the window, gazing out at the rolling plain. The tall arches of Aqua Felice were silhouetted darkly against the sky, and in the distance the horizon was broken by the misty outline of the Sabine hills. Now and then they passed a lonely group of farm-buildings set in a cluster of eucalyptus trees, planted against the fever; but for the most part the scene was barren and desolate, with scarcely a suggestion of actual, breathing human light. On the Appian Way were visible the gaunt outlines of Latin tombs, and occasionally the ruined remains of a mediaeval watch-tower. The picture was almost too perfect in its beauty; it was like the painted back drop for a spectacular play. Scarcely real, and yet one of the oldest things in the world—the rolling Campagna, the arches of the aqueducts, Rome behind and the Sabines before. So it had been for centuries; thousands of human lives were wrapped up in it. That was its charm. The picture was not inanimate, but pathetically human. As she looked far off across the plain so mournfully beautiful in its desolation, a sudden rush of feeling swept over her, a rush of that insane love of Italy which has engulfed so many foreigners in the waters of Lethe. She knew now how Paul felt. Italy! Italy! She loved it too.