Gervasio and Marcellus were conveyed into the hall, and it would be difficult to say which was the more frightened of the two. Marcellus slunk under a chair and whined at the lights, and Gervasio looked after him as if he were tempted to follow. Mrs. Copley, attracted by the disturbance, appeared from the salon, and a medley of questions and explanations ensued. Gervasio, meanwhile, sat up very straight and very scared, clutching the arms of the big carved chair in which Sybert had placed him.
‘We thought he might be useful to run errands,’ Sybert suggested as they finished the account of the boy’s maltreatment.
‘Poor child!’ said Mrs. Copley. ‘We can find something for him to do. He is small, but he looks intelligent. I have always intended to have a little page—or he might even do as a tiger for Gerald’s pony-cart.’
‘No, Aunt Katherine,’ expostulated Marcia. ‘I shan’t have him dressed in livery. I don’t think it’s right to turn him into a servant before he’s old enough to choose.’
‘The position of a trained servant is a much higher one than he would ever fill if left to himself. He is only a peasant child, my dear.’
‘He is a psychological problem,’ she declared. ‘I am going to prove that environment is everything and heredity’s nothing, and I shan’t have him dressed in livery. I found him, and he’s mine—at least half mine.’
She glanced across at Sybert and he nodded approval.
‘I will turn my share of the authority over to you, Miss Marcia, since it appears to be in such good hands.’
‘Marcia shall have her way,’ said Mr. Copley. ‘We’ll let Gervasio be an unofficial page and postpone the question of livery for the present.’
‘He can play with Gerald,’ she suggested. ‘We were wishing the other night that he had some one to play with, and Gervasio will be just the person; it will be good for his Italian.’
‘I suspect that Gervasio’s Italian may not be useful for drawing-room purposes,’ her uncle laughed.
‘I shall send him to college,’ she added, her mind running ahead of present difficulties, ‘and prove that peasants are really as bright as princes, if they have the same chance. He’ll turn out a genius like—like Crispi.’
‘Heaven forbid!’ exclaimed Sybert, but he examined Marcia with a new interest in his eyes.
‘We can decide on the young man’s career later,’ Copley suggested. ‘He seems to be embarrassed by these personalities.’
Gervasio, with all these august eyes upon him, was on the point of breaking out into one of his old-time wails when Mrs. Copley fortunately diverted the attention by inquiring if they had dined.
‘Neither Mr. Sybert nor I have had any dinner,’ Marcia returned, ‘and I shouldn’t be surprised if Gervasio has missed several. But Marcellus, under the chair there, has had his,’ she added.
Mrs. Copley recalling her duties as hostess, a jangling of bells ensued. Pietro appeared, and stared at Gervasio with as much astonishment as is compatible with the office of butler. Mrs. Copley ordered dinner for two in the dining-room and for one in the kitchen, and turned the boy over to Pietro’s care.
‘Oh, let’s have him eat with us, just for to-night.’ Marcia pleaded. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Mr. Sybert? He’s so hungry; I love to watch hungry little boys eat.’
‘Marcia!’ expostulated her aunt in disgust. ‘How can you say such things? The child is barefooted.’
‘Since my own son and heir is banished from the dinner-table, I object to an unwashed alien’s taking his place,’ Copley put in. ‘Gervasio will dine with the cook.’
To Gervasio’s infinite relief, he was led off to the kitchen and consigned to the care of François, who later in the evening confided to Pietro that he didn’t believe the boy had ever eaten before. Marcia’s and Sybert’s dinner that night was an erratic affair and quite upset the traditions of the Copley ménage. To Pietro’s scandalization, the two followed him into the kitchen between every course to see how their protégé was progressing.
Gervasio sat perched on a three-legged stool before the long kitchen table, his little bare feet dangling in space, an ample towel about his neck, while an interested scullery-maid plied him with viands. He would have none of the strange dishes that were set before him, but with an expression of settled purpose on his face was steadily eating his way through a bowl of macaroni. It was with a sigh that he had finally to acknowledge himself beaten by the Copley larder. Marcia called Bianca (Marietta’s successor) and bade her give Gervasio a bath and a bed. Bianca had known the boy in his pre-villa days, and, if anything, was more wide-eyed than Pietro on his sudden promotion.
As Marcia was starting upstairs that night, Sybert strolled across the hall toward her and held out his hand.
‘How would it be if we declared an amnesty,’ he inquired—‘at least until Gervasio is fairly started in his career?’
She glanced up in his face a second, surprised, and then shook her head with an air of scepticism. ‘We can try,’ she smiled, ‘but I am afraid we were meant to be enemies.’
Her room was flooded with moonlight; she undressed without lighting her candle, and slipping on a light woollen kimono, sat down on a cushion beside the open window. She was too excited and restless to sleep. She leaned her chin on her hand, with her elbow resting on the low window-sill, and let the cool breeze fan her face.
After a time she heard some one strike a match on the loggia, and her uncle and Sybert came out to the terrace and paced back and forth, talking in low tones. She could hear the rise and fall of their voices, and every now and then the breeze wafted in the smell of their cigars. She grew wider and wider awake, and followed them with her eyes as they passed and repassed in their tireless tramp. At the end of the terrace their voices sank to a low murmur, and then by the loggia they rose again until she could hear broken sentences. Sybert’s voice sounded angry, excited, almost fierce, she thought; her uncle’s, low, decisive, half contemptuous.
Once, as they passed under the window, she heard her uncle say sharply: ‘Don’t be a fool, Sybert. It will make a nasty story if it gets out—and nothing’s gained.’
She did not hear Sybert’s reply, but she saw his angry gesture as he flung away the end of his cigar. The men paused by the farther end of the terrace and stood for several minutes arguing in lowered tones. Then, to Marcia’s amazement, Sybert leaped the low parapet by the ilex grove and struck out across the fields, while her uncle came back across the terrace alone, entered the house, and closed the door. She sat up straight with a quickly beating heart. What was the matter? Could they have quarrelled? Was Sybert going to the station? Surely he would not walk. She leaned out of the window and looked after him, a black speck in the moonlit wheat-field. No, he was going toward Castel Vivalanti. Why Castel Vivalanti at this time of the night? Had it anything to do with Gervasio?—or perhaps Tarquinio, the baker’s son? She recalled her uncle’s words: ‘Don’t be a fool. It will make a nasty story if it gets out.’ Perhaps people’s suspicions against him were true, after all. She thought of his look that night in the train. What was behind it? And then she thought of the picture of him in the carriage with the little boy in his arms. A man who was so kind to children could not be bad at heart. And yet, if he were all that her uncle had thought him, why did he have so many enemies—and so many doubtful friends?
The breeze had grown cold, and she rose with a quick shiver and went to bed. She lay a long time with wide-open eyes watching the muslin curtains sway in the wind. She thought again of Paul Dessart’s words in the warm, sleepy, sunlit cloister; of the little crowd of ragamuffins chasing the dog; of her long, silent ride with Sybert; of the moonlit gateway of Castel Vivalanti, with the dark, high walls towering above. Her thoughts were growing hazy and she was almost asleep when, mingled with a half-waking dream, she heard footsteps cross the terrace and the hall door open softly.