‘Nothing. I want to go. It’s stopped raining.’
He led out the horses and helped her to mount.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked again, ‘Your hand is trembling. Did I say anything to frighten you?’
She shook her head without answering, and when they reached the road she drew a long breath of fresh air and glanced back with a nervous laugh.
‘I had the most horrible feeling in there! I felt as if something were going to reach out from those vats and grab me from behind.’
‘I think,’ he suggested, ‘that you’d better take some of your aunt’s quinine when you get home.’
‘Mr. Sybert,’ she said presently, ‘I told you one day that I thought poor people were picturesque, I don’t think so any more.’
‘I didn’t suppose that you meant it.’
‘But I did!’ said Marcia. ‘I’ve merely changed my mind.’ She touched Kentucky Lil with her whip and splashed on ahead down the road that led toward the monastery, while Sybert followed with a slightly perplexed frown.
The storm had passed as quickly as it had come. Loose, flying clouds still darkened the sky, but the heavy black thunder-clouds were already far to the eastward over the Apennines. In its brief passage, however, the storm had left havoc behind it. The vines in the wayside vineyards were stripped of their leaves, and the bamboo poles they were trained upon broken and bent. Branches torn from the olive trees were strewn over the grass, and in the wheat fields the young grain was bowed almost to the ground. A fierce mountain torrent poured down the side of the road through a gully that an hour before had been dry.
The mountain air was fresh and keen, and the horses, excited by the storm, plunged on, recklessly irrespective of mud and water. They crossed the little valley that lay between the hill of the wine-cellar and the higher hill of the monastery, clattered through the single street of the tiny hamlet which huddled itself at the base of the hill, and wound on upward along the narrow walled roadway that turned and unturned upon itself like the coils of a serpent. They passed through the dark grove of cypresses that skirted the outer walls, and emerged for a moment on a small plateau which gave a wide view of receding hills and valleys and hills again. Below them, at a precipitous angle, lay the valley they had just come through and the clustering brown-tiled roofs of the little Noah’s Ark village.
As they rode out from the shadow of the trees, by a common impulse they both drew rein and brought their horses to a standstill at the edge of the grove. Away to the eastward the sky was black, but the western sky was a blaze of orange light, and the sun, an orange ball, was dropping into the purple Campagna as into a sea. The shadows were settling in the valley beneath them, but the hills were tinged with a shimmering light, and the tower above their heads was glowing in a sombre, softened beauty.
They had scarcely had time, however, to more than glance at the wide-spread picture before them when they became aware of a little human drama that was being enacted under their eyes.
A young monk in the brown cassock of the Franciscans, probably a lay brother in the monastery, was standing in the vineyard by the roadside, resting for a moment from his task of tying up the vines that had been beaten down by the storm. He had not seen the riders—his back was turned toward them, and his gaze was resting on the field across the way, where scarlet poppies were growing among the wheat. But his eyes were not for the flowers, nor yet for the light on the hills beyond—these he had seen before and understood. He was watching a dark-haired peasant girl and a man dressed in shepherd’s clothes, who were strolling side by side along the narrow pathway that led diagonally through the wheat. The man, strong-limbed and brown and muscular, in sheepskin trousers and pointed hat, was bending toward her, talking insistently with vehement Italian gestures. She appeared to listen, and then she shrugged her shoulders and half drew back, while her mocking laugh rang out clearly on the still evening air. For a moment he hesitated, then he boldly put his arm around her, and the two passed down the hill and out of sight in the direction of the hamlet. The poor young frate, his work forgotten, with hands idly hanging at his sides, stared at the spot where they had disappeared. And as he looked, the monastery bells in the campanile above him slowly rang out the ‘Ave Maria.’ He started guiltily, and with a hasty sign of the cross caught up his rosary and bowed his head in prayer.
At the unexpected sound of the bells the horses broke into a quick trot. The monk, startled at the clatter of hoofs so near, turned suddenly and looked in their direction. As he caught sight of Marcia’s and Sybert’s eyes upon him, and knew that they had seen, a quick flush spread over his thin dark face, and turning away he bowed his head again.
Marcia broke the silence with a low laugh as they rode on into the shade of the cypresses.
‘He thought we were–’ and then she stopped.
‘Lovers too,’ said Sybert. ‘Poor devil! I suppose he thinks the world is full of lovers outside his monastery walls. There,’ he added, ‘is a man who is living for an idea.’
‘And is beginning to suspect that it is the wrong one.’
He shot her a quick glance of comprehension. ‘Ah, there’s the rub,’ he returned, a trifle soberly—‘when you begin to suspect your idea’s the wrong one.’
They rode on down the hill into the darkening valley. They were going the straight way home now, and the horses knew it. They were still in the hills when the twilight faded, and a young moon, just beyond the crescent, took its place, riding high in a sky scattered thick with flying clouds. It was a wild, wet, windy night, though on the lower levels the roads were fairly dry: the storm had evidently wasted its fury on the heights.
It was too fast a pace to admit much talking, and they both contented themselves with their thoughts. Only once did Marcia break the silence.
‘I feel as if we were carrying the good news from Ghent to Aix!’
Sybert laughed and quoted softly:—
Kentucky Lil would make quite a Roland,’ he broke off.
‘She’s the nicest horse I ever rode,’ said Marcia.
As they turned in at the villa gates she said contritely, ‘I didn’t know it would take so long; I’m afraid, Mr. Sybert, that I’ve made you very late!’
‘Perhaps I like adventures too,’ he smiled; ‘and you and I, Miss Marcia, have travelled far to-day.’
CHAPTER XIV
As they galloped up the long avenue under the arching trees, the villa presently came into view. The sound of laughing voices floated out from the open windows. Marcia drew rein with a half-involuntary cry of dismay. The Roystons had come.
‘I’d forgotten!’ she explained to her companion. ‘We’re giving a dinner-party to-night.’
At the sound of the clattering hoofs on the gravel of the driveway a gay group poured out on to the loggia, welcoming the dilatory riders with laughter and questions and greetings.
‘My dear child! Where have you been?’
‘Here, Pietro; call some one to take the horses.’
‘Is this the way you welcome guests? I shall never–’
‘Dinner’s been waiting half an hour. We were beginning to think–’
‘I’ve been worried to death! You haven’t caught cold, have you?’
‘No, Aunt Katherine,’ she laughed as she pulled off her gloves and shook hands with the visitors. ‘But we’ve been nearly drowned! We should have been wholly drowned if Mr. Sybert hadn’t spied a very leaky ark on the top of a hill.’
‘I’m relieved!’ sighed her uncle as they passed into the hall. ‘I was beginning to fear that you had had a disagreement on the way, and that it was another case of the Kilkenny cats.’