‘It facilitates matters,’ he agreed.
‘I think I’m beginning to understand Mr. Sybert,’ she added somewhat vaguely. ‘He’s different, when you understand him, from the way you thought he was when you didn’t understand him.’
‘Ah, Sybert!’ Mr. Copley raised his head and brought his eyes back from the edge of the landscape. ‘I thought I knew him, but he’s been a revelation to me this spring.’
‘How do you mean?’ Marcia asked, striving to keep out of her tone the interest that was behind it.
‘Oh, the way he’s taken hold of things. It seems an absurd thing to say, but I believe he’s had almost as much influence as the police in quieting the trouble. He has an unbelievably strong hold on the people—how he got it, I don’t know. He understands them as well as an Italian, and yet he is a foreigner, which gives him, in some ways, a great advantage. They trust him because they think that, being a foreigner, he has nothing to make out of it. He’s a marvellous fellow when it comes to action.’
‘You never would guess it to look at him!’ she returned. ‘Why does he pretend to be so bored?’
‘Be so bored? Well, I suppose there are some things that do bore him; and the ones that don’t, bore other people. His opinions are not universally popular in Rome, and being a diplomatist, I dare say he thinks it as well to keep them to himself.’
‘What are his opinions?’ she asked tentatively. ‘I don’t like to accuse him of being an anarchist, since he assures me that he’s not. But when a man wants to overthrow the government–’
‘Nonsense! Sybert doesn’t want to overthrow the government any more than I do. Just at present it’s under the control of a few corrupt politicians, but that’s a thing that’s likely to happen in any country, and it’s only a temporary evil. The Italians will be on their feet again in a year or so, all the better for their shaking-up, and Sybert knows it. He’s got more real faith in the government than most of the Italians I know.’
‘But he talks against it terribly.’
‘Well, he sees the evil. He’s been looking at it pretty closely, and he knows it’s there; and when Sybert feels a thing he feels it strongly. But,’ Copley smiled, ‘while he says things himself against the country, you’ll find he’ll not let any one else say them.’
‘What do people think about him now—being mixed up in all these riots?’
‘Oh, just now he’s mixed up in the right side, and the officials are very willing to pat him on the back. But as for the populace, I’m afraid he’s not making himself over-liked. They have a most immoral tendency to sympathize with the side that’s against the law, and they can’t understand their friends not sympathizing with the same side. It’s a pretty hard thing for him to have to tell these poor fellows to be quiet and go back to their work and starve in silence.’ Copley sighed and folded his arms. ‘I am sorry, Marcia, you don’t like Sybert better. There are not many like him.’
Marcia let the observation pass without comment.
The next morning, as Mrs. Copley and Marcia were sitting on the loggia listlessly engaged with books and embroidery, there came whirring down the avenue the contessa’s immaculate little victoria, with the yellow coronet emblazoned on the sides, with the coachman and footman in the Torrenieri livery, green with yellow pipings. It was a gay little affair; it matched the contessa. She stepped out, pretty and debonair, in a fluttering pale-green summer gown, and ran forward to the loggia with a little exclamation of distress.
‘Cara signora, signorina, I am desolated! We must part! Is it not sad? I go with Bartolomeo’ (Bartolomeo was the count) ‘to plant olive orchards on his estate in the Abruzzi. Is it not lonely, that—to spend the summer in an empty castle on the top of a mountain, with only a view for company? And my friends at the baths or the lakes or in Switzerland, or—oh, everywhere except on my mountain-top!’
Marcia laughed at the contessa’s despair.
‘But why do you go, contessa, if you do not like it?’ she inquired.
‘But my husband likes it. He has a passion for farming; after roulette, it it his chief amusement. He is very pastoral—Bartolomeo. He adores the mountain and the view and the olive orchards. And in Italy, signorina, the wife has to do as the husband wishes.’
‘I’m afraid the wives have to do that the world over, contessa.’
‘Ah, no, signorina, you cannot tell me that; I have seen. In America the husband does as the wife wishes. It is a beautiful country, truly. You have many charming customs. Yes, I will give you good advice: you will be wise to marry an American. They do not like mountain-tops. But perhaps you will visit me on my mountain-top?’ she asked. ‘The view—ah, the beautiful view! It is not so bad.’
‘I’m afraid not, contessa. We are leaving for the Tyrol ourselves a week from to-morrow.’
‘So soon! Every one is going. Truly, the world comes to an end next week in Rome.’
Marcia found herself growing unexpectedly cordial toward their guest; even the contessa appeared suddenly dear as she was about to be snatched away. She bade her an almost affectionate farewell, and stood by the balustrade waving her handkerchief until the carriage disappeared.
‘Will marvels never cease?’ she asked her aunt. ‘I think—I really think that I like the contessa!’
CHAPTER XXI
The next day—it was just a week before their proposed trip to the Tyrol—Marcia accompanied her uncle into Rome for the sake of one or two important errands which might not be intrusted to a man’s uncertain memory. Mr. Copley found himself unready to return to the villa on the train they had planned to take, and, somewhat to Marcia’s consternation, he carried her off to the Embassy for tea. She mounted the steps with a fast-beating heart. Would Laurence Sybert be there? She had not so much as seen him since the night of her birthday ball, and the thought of facing him before a crowd, with no chance to explain away that awful moment by the fountain, was more than disconcerting.
Her first glance about the room assured her that he was not in it, and the knowledge carried with it a mingled feeling of relief and disappointment. The air was filled with an excited buzz of conversation, the talk being all of riots and rumours of riots. Marcia drifted from one group to another, and finally found herself sitting on a window-seat beside a woman whose face was familiar, but whom for the moment she could not place.
‘You don’t remember me, Miss Copley?’ her companion smiled.
Marcia looked puzzled. ‘I was trying to place you,’ she confessed. ‘I remember your face.’
‘One day, early this spring, at Mr. Dessart’s studio–’
‘To be sure! The lady who writes!’ she laughed. ‘I never caught your name.’
‘And the worst gossip in Rome? Ah, well, they slandered me, Miss Copley. One is naturally interested in the lives of the people one is interested in—but for the others! They may make their fortunes and lose them again, and get married, and elope and die, for all the attention I ever give.’
Marcia smiled at her concise summary of the activities of life, and put her down as a Frenchwoman.
‘And the villa in the hills?’ she asked. ‘How did it go? And the ghost of the Wicked Prince? Did Monsieur Benoit paint him?’
‘The ghost was a grievous disappointment. He turned out to be the butler.’
‘Ah—poor Monsieur Benoit! He has many disappointments. C’est triste, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Many disappointments?’ queried Marcia, quite in the dark.
‘The Miss Roystons, Mr. Dessart’s relatives,’ pursued the lady; ‘they are friends of yours. I met them at the Melvilles’ a few weeks ago. They are charming, are they not?’
‘Very,’ said Marcia, wondering slightly at the turn the conversation had taken.
‘And this poor Monsieur Benoit—he has gone, all alone, to paint moonlight in Venice. Ce que c’est que l’amour!’