‘Not often,’ assented Eleanor; ‘but there have been instances. By the way,’ she added, ‘I wish you’d explain about Mr. Sybert; I confess I don’t quite grasp his standing in the family. How do you come to be taking such lengthy horseback rides with a young man and no groom? You never did that when my mother was chaperoning you.’
‘No,’ acquiesced Marcia; ‘I didn’t. But Mr. Sybert’s a little different. He’s not exactly a young man, you know; he’s a friend of Uncle Howard’s. He happened to be available this afternoon, and Angelo didn’t happen to be, so he came instead.’
‘As a sort of sub-groom?’ Eleanor asked. ‘I should think he might object to the position.’
‘He couldn’t help himself!’ she laughed. ‘Aunt Katherine forced him into it.’
Eleanor regarded Marcia with a still puzzled smile. ‘You talk about Mr. Sybert as if he were a contemporary of your grandfather. How old is he, may I ask?’
‘I don’t know. He’s nearly as old as Uncle Howard. Thirty-five or thirty-six, I should say.’
‘A man isn’t worth talking to under thirty-five.’
‘Oh, nonsense!’ Margaret objected. ‘I never heard any one in my life talk better than Paul, and he’s exactly twenty-five.’
‘Paul talks words; he doesn’t talk ideas,’ said her sister.
There was a pause, in which Eleanor leaned forward to examine some bits of green and blue iridescent glass lying in a little tray on the table. ‘What are these?’ she inquired.
‘Pieces of perfume-bottles that the grave-digger in Palestrina found in an old Etruscan tomb. There were some bronze mirrors, and the most wonderful gold necklace—I wanted it dreadfully, but he didn’t dare sell it; it’s gone to a museum in Rome. Aren’t these pieces of glass lovely, though? I am going to have them set in gold and made into pins.’
‘Here’s a little bottle that’s scarcely broken.’ Eleanor held it up before the candle and let the light play upon its surface. ‘Who do you suppose owned it before you, Marcia?’
‘Some girl who turned to dust centuries ago.’
‘And her necklaces and mirrors and perfume-bottles still exist. What a commentary!’
‘Thank goodness, they don’t put such things in one’s coffin nowadays,’ said Marcia; ‘or twenty-five hundred years from now some other girl would be saying the same of us.’
‘Twenty-five hundred years,’ Eleanor murmured. ‘I declare, my nine seasons sink into insignificance!’ She dropped the bottle into its tray and leaned back in her chair with a little laugh. ‘America is a bit tame, isn’t it, after Italy? One doesn’t get so many emotions.’
‘I’m not sure but one gets too many in Italy,’ said Marcia.
‘How long are you going to stay over?’
‘I don’t know. It’s so much easier not to make up one’s mind. I shall probably stay a year or so longer with Uncle Howard.’
‘I like your uncle, Marcia. He has a very taking way of saying funny things without smiling.’
‘Ah,’ sighed Marcia, ‘he has!’
‘And as for Mr. Sybert–’ Margaret put in mockingly.
‘I think he’s about the most interesting man I’ve met in Europe,’ Eleanor agreed imperturbably.
‘The most interesting man you’ve met in Europe?’ Marcia opened her eyes. The statement was sweeping, and Eleanor had had experience. ‘How do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Well,’ said Eleanor, with the judicial air of a connoisseur, ‘for one thing, he has a striking face. I don’t know whether you ever noticed it, but he has eyes exactly like that portrait of Filippino Lippi in the Uffizi. I kept thinking about it all the time I was talking to him—sleepy sort of Italian eyes, you know—and an American mouth. It makes an interesting combination; you keep wondering what a man like that will do.’
As Marcia made no comment, she continued:
‘He has an awfully interesting history. We met him at a reception last week, and Mr. Melville told me all about him afterward. He was born in Genoa—his father was United States consul—and he was brought up in the midst of the excitement during the fight for Italian unity. Politics was in the air he breathed. He knows more about the Italians than they know about themselves. He speaks the language like a native, and he never–’
‘Oh, I know what Mr. Melville told you,’ Marcia interrupted. ‘He likes him.’
‘Don’t most people?’
‘Ask your cousin about him. Ask Mr. Carthrope, the English sculptor. Ask anybody you please—barring my uncle—and see what you’ll hear.’
‘What shall I hear?’
‘A different story from every person.’
‘Well, really! He’s worth knowing.’
‘I detest him!’ Marcia made the statement as much from habit as conviction.
Eleanor regarded her a moment rather narrowly, and then she observed: ‘I will tell you one thing, Marcia Copley; and that is, that interesting men are mighty scarce in this world. I don’t remember ever having met more than half a dozen.’
‘And you’ve had experience,’ suggested Marcia.
‘Nine seasons.’
‘Who were they—the half-dozen?’
‘One was a Kansas politician who wrote poetry. A most amazing mixture of crudeness and tact—remarkably bright in some ways, but unexpectedly lacking in others. He’d never read Hamlet; said he’d heard of it, though. Another was a super-civilized Russian. I met him in Cairo. He spoke seven languages, and didn’t find any of them full enough to express his thoughts. Another was–’
‘The engineer,’ suggested Marcia. She had heard of the engineer both from Eleanor and her mother.
‘Yes,’ agreed Eleanor, ‘the chief engineer on the Claytons’ yacht. I cruised around with them two years ago on the Mediterranean, and the only interesting man on board was the engineer. He was English, and he’d lived in India and Burma, and in—oh, hundreds of nameless places. I couldn’t get much out of him at first; he was pretty shy. English people are, you know. But when he saw that one was really interested he would tell the most astonishing tales. I didn’t have much chance to talk to him—he didn’t appeal to mamma. That was one of the times that mamma was impetuous,’ she added with a laugh. ‘Instead of keeping on to Port Said with the boat, we disembarked at Alexandria and ran up to Cairo for the rest of the winter. It was there I met the Russian. He was stopping at Shepheard’s.’
Eleanor paused, and her gaze became reminiscent as she sat toying with the little Etruscan perfume-bottle.
‘And the others?’ Marcia prompted.
‘Well, let me see,’ Eleanor laughed. ‘I once knew a professor of psychology in a little speck of a New England college. He spent his whole life in thinking, and he’d arrived at some very queer conclusions. He was most entertaining—he knew absolutely nothing about the world.’ A shade of something like remorse crossed her face, and she hastily abandoned the professor. ‘Did I say there were any more? I can’t think who the fifth can be, unless I include the blacksmith who married my maid. I never knew him personally; I merely judge from her report of him. He beats her, I believe, when he gets angry; but he’s so apologetic afterward that she enjoys it. If you’ve ever read Wuthering Heights he’s exactly like Heathcliff. I’d really like to know him. He’d be worth studying.’
‘That’s the trouble,’ complained Marcia. ‘If you’re a man you can go around and get acquainted with any one you please, whether he’s a blacksmith or a prince; but if you’re a girl you have to wait till you’re introduced at a tea. And the interesting ones never are introduced at teas.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Eleanor; ‘that’s partly true. But, on the other hand, I think you really get to know people better if you’re a girl—what they’re really like inside, I mean. Men are remarkably confidential creatures.’
‘Did you find Mr. Sybert confidential?’
‘N-no. I can’t say that I did. He’s queer, isn’t he? You have the feeling that he doesn’t talk about what he thinks about—that’s why I should like to know him. It’s not what a man does that makes him interesting; it’s what he thinks. It’s his potentialities.’