‘Uncle Howard,’ she said, ‘I think you’ve done very wrong not to tell me this before. I had a right to know, and I could have helped it. My father loves his business, but he loves me better. It’s true, as I say, he’s just doing it as a sort of problem. He doesn’t see the suffering he causes, and he doesn’t really believe there is any. Of course he knows that some people lose when he gains, but he thinks that they go into it with their eyes open, and that they must accept the chances of war. He’s exactly as good a man as either of you.’ And then, as a sudden recollection flashed across her, she whirled about toward Sybert, her glance divided between indignation and contempt. ‘And you called me the “Wheat Princess” before every one in Paul Dessart’s studio. You knew that it wasn’t my fault; you knew that I didn’t even know about the trouble, and you laughed when I told the story of the Vivalanti ghost.’
Her voice broke slightly, and, turning her back, she drew a piece of paper toward her on the table and began to write.
‘There,’ she said, holding out a scrawled sheet toward her uncle. ‘There is a cablegram. Please see that it is sent immediately.’
Copley ran his eyes over it in silence, and his mouth twitched involuntarily into a smile.
‘Well, Marcia, I’ll see that it goes. I don’t know—it may do some good, after all.’ He paused awkwardly a moment and held out his hand. ‘Am I forgiven?’ he asked. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything against your father; but he’s my brother, remember, and while I abuse him myself I wouldn’t let an outsider do it. You are right; he doesn’t know what he is doing. You must forget what I said. I have thought about it too much. Every one in Italy believes that I have an interest in the deal; and when I am doing my best to help things along, it is a little hard, you know, to be accused—by the very people I am giving to—of being the cause of their distress.’
‘Yes, Uncle Howard, I understand; I don’t blame you,’ she returned, with a note of weariness in her voice; ‘but—papa is really the kindest man in the world.’
‘Ah, Marcia, a very kind-hearted man nowadays can do a great deal of harm by telegraph without having to witness the results.’
Sybert crossed the room toward her with a curious deep look in his eyes. He half held out his hand, but Marcia turned away without appearing to notice, and picking up her uncle’s cheque-book from the table, she tore out a leaf and scrawled across the face.
‘There’s some money for the Relief Committee,’ she said, as she tossed the slip of paper across the table toward him. ‘That’s all I have in the bank just at present, but I will give some more as soon as I get it.’
Sybert’s face was equally impassive as he glanced from the paper back to her.
‘Thirteen thousand lire is a good deal. Do you think you ought–’
‘I do as I please with my own money—this is my own,’ she added in parenthesis. ‘My mother left it to me.’
‘As you please,’ he returned, pocketing the slip with a half-shrug. ‘I know a village in Calabria that will be very grateful for a little help until the olives ripen again.’
‘Dinner is served,’ announced Pietro in the doorway.
Marcia nodded to the two men.
‘I don’t want any dinner to-night,’ and she turned upstairs to her room. She sat for half an hour staring out at the darkening Campagna; then she rose and lighted the candles, and commenced a letter to her father. Her pen she dipped in blood. She told him everything she had heard or seen or imagined about Italy—of the ‘hunger madness’ in the north and the starving peasants in the south; of the poor people of Castel Vivalanti and little Gervasio. She told him what the people said about her uncle; that they called her the ‘Wheat Princess’; and that the children in the streets taunted her as she went past. She told him that the name of Copley was despised from end to end of Italy. All the crimes that have ever been laid at the door of the government and the church and the ignorance of the people, Marcia heaped upon her offending father’s shoulders, but with the forgiving assurance that she knew he didn’t mean it. And would he please prove that he didn’t mean it, by stopping the corner immediately and sending wheat to Italy? It was a letter to wring a father’s heart—and a financier’s.
CHAPTER XVII
For the next week or so Marcia steadfastly avoided meeting people. There were no visitors at the villa, and it was easy to find pretexts for not going into Rome. She felt an overwhelming reluctance to meeting any of her friends—to meeting any one, in truth, who even knew her name. It seemed to her that beneath their smiles and pleasant speeches she could read their thoughts; that the words ‘wheat, wheat, wheat’ rang as an undertone to every sentence that was spoken. Her horseback rides were ridden in the direction away from Castel Vivalanti, and if, by chance, she did meet any of her former friends the villagers, she galloped past, looking the other way.
Mrs. Copley was engaged with preparations for the coming ball. It was to be partially in honour of the Roystons, partially in honour of Marcia’s birthday, and all of Rome—or as much of it as existed for the Copleys—was to be asked to stop the night either at Villa Vivalanti or at the contessa’s villa in Tivoli. Marcia, her aunt complained, showed an inordinate lack of interest in these absorbing preparations. She was usually ready enough with suggestions, and her listlessness did not pass unnoticed. Mr. Copley’s eyes occasionally rested upon her with a guiltily worried expression, and if she caught the look she immediately assumed an air of gaiety. Neither had made the slightest reference to the subject of that evening’s scene, except upon the arrival of a characteristic cablegram from Willard Copley, in which he informed his daughter that he was sending her a transport of wheat as a birthday present.
‘You see, Uncle Howard,’ she had said as she handed him the message, ‘it is possible to do good as well as harm by telegraph.’
Copley read it with a slight smile. ‘After all, I’m afraid he’s no worse than the rest of us!’ and with that, wheat was a tabooed subject.
For the future, however, he was particularly thoughtful toward his niece to show that he was sorry, and she met his advances more than half-way to show that she had forgiven; and, all in all, they came to a better understanding because of their momentary falling out. Mrs. Copley accounted for Marcia’s apathy (and possibly nearest the truth) on the ground that she had taken a touch of malaria in the old wine-cellar, and she dosed her with quinine until the poor girl’s head rang.
It happened therefore that when the evening came to attend a musicale at the Contessa Torrenieri’s villa, Marcia could very gracefully decline. The occasion of the function was the count’s return from the Riviera; and although Marcia had some little curiosity in regard to the count, still it did not mount to such proportions that she was ready to face the rest of the world for its sake.
Tivoli and Villa Torrenieri were a long nine miles away, and Villa Vivalanti that evening dined earlier than usual. As Marcia came downstairs in response to Pietro’s summons, she paused a moment on the landing; she had caught the sound of Sybert’s low voice in the salon. She had not seen him since the tempestuous ending of the San Marco festa, and she had not yet determined on just what footing their relations were. She stood hesitating with a very slight quickening of the pulse, and then with a decided thrill of annoyance as an explanation for his unexpected visit presented itself—he had returned from Naples and come out to Villa Vivalanti for the purpose of attending the contessa’s musicale. Marcia went on downstairs more slowly, and entered the salon with a none too cordial air. Sybert’s own greeting was in his usual vein of polite indifference. His manner contained not the slightest suggestion of any misunderstanding in the past. It transpired that he knew nothing of the impending party; he was clothed in an unpretentious dinner-jacket. But he expressed his willingness to attend, in spite of the lack of invitation—it was doubtless waiting for him in Naples, he declared—provided his host would lend him a coat. His host grumblingly assented, and Sybert inquired, with a glance from Mrs. Copley’s velvet and jewels to Marcia’s simple white woollen gown, what time they were planning to start.